Summer's Short Stories
by ay2001
Summary: People who live on Danville don't get normal lives. Doubly so for the people who are acquainted with Phineas and Ferb. But, as they say, some misadventures can be far better than others... Now showing Episode 4, The Golden Girls' Games: 6-year-old Ginger's entering her first acrobatic/swordsmanship contest; Stacy goes out to make sure it doesn't happen, with a quite unwise plan...
1. The Weeping Water Lily

_**Special Headnote: That Episode 2 tag was preserved for the 63 pairs of eyes that had seen this prototype chapter of a project. For references, this is the Episode 1: The Weeping Water Lily. Unfortunately, the summary's been lost, so you'll have to find out the contents on your own. My apologies.**_

 **It's been a long time. How have you been?**

 **Well, I've been busy assembling this story, along with some other unrelated ones. Tell me what you think, yeah?**

* * *

In a room filled with sunlight leaking out of its windows, a pen danced its way through the paper as another sigh hit it. After the page ran out of space, the girl flipped it around, and pointed to another piece of paper.

"That's the… 60th page done, in 3 hours… You know, I should propose a patch for that. Fastest Official Accounting Document Writer… That'll be nice."

A knock on the door interrupted her thoughts. When she got up and opened it, she saw Ginger with a… slightly troubled look on her face.

 _Slightly might be an understatement,_ she thought.

"Hey, Gretchen… I-I need your help with something. A-are you busy?"

"Oh. Well, actually I am kinda busy. Isabella's been handing me twice my usual paperwork, but, uh, I think I can give myself an excuse to rest after 60 pages. What's up?"

"Oh, thank goodness. See, do you know what date is it today?"

"Uh… July 14th?"

" _ **It's more than just a July 14**_ _ **th**_ _ **, Gretchen!"**_ she yelled out, making the shorter girl reel back in surprise.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry…" Ginger slapped her forehead. "It's just—"

"Hold on, hold on, don't tell me," Gretchen interrupted her with a wave of her hands. "I think I'm having an actual shot for that Sherlock Scan Patch I've been pining for these few months, hold on, let me take a guess… It's Baljeet's birthday today, and now you're freaking out because you don't have the perfect gift for him, and now you're roping me out of my paperwork for a trip around town to find the perfect present, right?"

Ginger only cocked her head, letting her mouth open slightly.

"Uh…"

"Come on, I want to hear it," she crossed her arms and smiled. "A little gratification goes a long way."

"…You're close, if it helps. It's actually two days away."

"Oh, man!"

"Yeah, sorry for your loss. Anyway, I've been searching for a gift for him, yeah? I found this perfect copy of the encyclopedia he wanted for a long time on the library. So, I went there to loan it, but it turns out he already borrowed that same book! Ditto for the copy of the museum pieces! So I thought, why not a flower instead? But then I thought, a rose would be so cliché and impersonal…"

Gretchen slowly faded away from the conversation; she went through these ramblings several thousand times every month, and she currently did not have the energy to walk through another one.

"So then I called the security guards, and then those guys painting the roses red—"

"Ginger! Point?"

"Oh! Oh, sorry about that. I've been getting this tendency to ramble on about…"

An unappreciative look from Gretchen, and she finally closed her mouth.

"Okay, right. Point is, I've found a piece of paper detailing about a rare flower. So rare, the scientists haven't even completely analyzed it yet."

"What? Is that even possible?"

"Behold, Gretchen. The Weeping Water Lily."

She pulled out an old-looking page out of her pocket, holding it far above her face as a shining light leaked out of the window to illuminate it in dramatic lighting. Gretchen snatched the paper from her friend's hands, rudely interrupting the chanting angelic chorus.

"Is there even such a thing? Weeping Water Lily… Reproducing capabilities unknown, current location is unknown, but vaguely presumed to inhabit the Danville Highlands..."

"Wait, you understand that thing?" Ginger turned beside her to take a look.

"What are you talking about? It's simple. Sure there's a lot of scientific lingo involved, but it's pretty basic. Its zygotes are determined to be precisely homogenous and endemically integrated to the temperate conditions of exact state of forestry that can be found in Danville Highlands. Problem is, the specimen is statistically low in numbers because it cannot reproduce properly, since all of its pollinators are driven away by its ca—"

"Stop explaining! _Please!_ " Ginger yelled out, panting as if she ran 7 laps around the log's running field. "I was lucky to catch that Highlands bit!"

Gretchen smiled at her almost smugly. "Heh, that's peculiar. I thought you'd learn lots of things from dating a walking encyclopedia."

"We're not _dating!_ As much as I wish us to be…"

Gretchen pointed her eyes up in a blink.

"…Uh-huh… Well, I'm sure that'll be a fun trip, Ginger, but why didn't you call Isabella first? She can clear the operation for the whole troop, and I think she'll be really glad to help too... You know, considering your… mutual, uh… alignments?"

Ginger shook her head hard, almost as if she wanted to detach it from her neck.

"But that's exactly the problem, Gretchen! If I tell her about it, she'll take the flower all for herself! Then she'll go to give it to Phineas, except she'll get cold feet at the end of it, and then she'll end up letting that flower rot in the locker! Just like the Ruby Ring and the Gallant Gold Bar!"

"…That's, uh… that's actually a pretty good point." The short-haired girl sighed, putting a hand under her chin. "Uh, I don't know. It sounds good enough, but I really don't wanna let that pile of paper pile up even more..."

She pointed behind her, where gargantuan stacks of papers neatly surrounded the table, threatening to fall and sink everything in their path with the slightest disturbance.

"Oh, the accounting documents? I'll take care of that for you."

"You? Taking care of _all_ of that?"

"Sure! As long as we get that flower, why not?"

"Ginger, do you even know where you're going with this? It took me 2 hours to sort through 30 of those things!"

"Please. You're underestimating me again. Like you said, I've learned much from dating an encyclopedia. I've learned _numbers_ , Gretchen, not uh… what do you call it? Squidia…nelics?"

"Sesquipedalians."

"Yeah, that. So, you'll help me?"

Her eyes darted back and forth, from Ginger's pleading face to the massive stacks of paper behind her.

"…Alright. Just let me get my uniform."

* * *

"...I know, right? The internet is so redundant! Too much on teen celebrity crises, not enough on actual information. And that, Ginger, is why I continue to stick to books on biologies."

"You sound just like Baljeet," Ginger chuckled. "You know, you should talk to my sister some time. She goes on and on about the latest gossip she pulled from the Internet, but when there's a question about basic math and trigonometry—"

Gretchen turned her head when the girl suddenly went still as a statue.

"Hey, Ginger? What's goi—"

"Ssh!" She pushed a finger against the shorter girl's lips. "Maybe she hasn't noticed us yet…"

"What are you talking about?"

Ginger squinted, looking at some… _thing_ that was _presumably_ barreling down on them, from a long, long way away.

Before Gretchen could open her mouth again, the girl suddenly broke right to the street next to her, with Gretchen's hand paling from the tightness of her grasp.

"Ginger! What the heck is going on!?"

"We need to hide, now! If she knows it's us, Isabella will be on our case in no time!"

"Wha- Isabella? She's at where she'll always be, at Phineas' house! Who are we running from?"

"I'll explain later! Do you have the schematics of the tunnels?"

"The Emergency Tunnels? What f—"

"Do you have it or not?!"

"Always will!" She pulled out a small folded piece of paper, and handed it over to her.

"Alright then, lemme see… Take a sharp right… And inside the bushes you go!"

Gretchen could only hold out in earnest as her arm got nearly pulled out of its joints in the sharp turn, followed shortly by the leaves and thorns hitting her body as they dived past the shrubberies.

"Isn't this a little melodramatic for a breakneck chase with something that could most probably be _nothing_ , Ginger?"

"Ssh. Help me open this hatch."

With a flash of a disapproving look, she moved to grab the hatch's handle.

They dropped down from the hatch's ladder and sat down on the brick floor, trying to catch their breath. It was pitch black without sunlight, so they stood up, pulled out their flashlights and pointed it around the horizon.

"Alright then, Ginger, care to explain what was that all about now?"

But a third person let out a small chuckle them from behind, resting cold fingers on their shoulders. It whispered,

"What'cha doin'?"

The two screamed at the top of their lungs, simultaneously hitting the shadow with their flashlights in reflex.

"Ow! Hey! What was that for!?"

"Hey, wait a sec…"

Gretchen finally pointed the flashlight at the person rolling on the ground, revealing a familiar face who was by all means _not_ their fair leader.

"Man, you guys are really tense! Ow, do you think I might get a concussion or something from that? Hey, who else bets Isabella's reeling from shock now because I used her catchphrase? Ouch-he-he-he…"

"Katie?" She narrowed her eyes at the green-eyed girl. "What the heck are you doing here?"

"I was going to ask you that same question, but apparently I was not on the need-to-know list," Katie replied, shifting a glare at the second girl. "Assuming by Ginger's preposition to run for the hills the moment she saw me!"

"Oops. Yeah, sorry about that. I was just worried for the… mission."

Ginger knelt down to her to examine the blonde's head. "But why on earth would you make us jump like that? This tunnel's creepy enough on its own."

"Haven't you gals heard of a thing called harmless fun? Ow! Man, I've been left behind in patch counts enough as it is! If I get to a hospital for this again, I swear I'll take all of your earned patches as long as I'm in there!"

"No, don't worry, it's just a small bump," she replied, ruffling through Katie's scalp. "You won't get to the hospital for this tiny thing."

"Oh, thank goodness." She closed her eyes, arching her neck on Ginger's lap. "So, you wanna tell me what's so important I need to get a bump on my head for asking?"

Gretchen crossed her arms. "It's actually a little silly. Ginger's—"

" _ **No!"**_ She yelled out, forcing a wince out of Katie. "If you tell her, then she'll tell Isabella the moment we bring that flower down to storage! Then my plan's all busted for sure!"

"Isabella? Flowers?" Katie rolled her eyes up at Ginger, grinning deviously. "He-hey! Is this another one of those my crush before your crush thing you got with Isabella?"

Silence.

"…I'm not going to tell you, if that's what you're asking."

"Oh, come on!" She put on the best pleading face she had. "Even if I said pretty please with a cherry on top?"

"Nope."

"Oh, come on, Ginger, I swear I won't tell anyone! Anyone at all!"

"You swear, huh?"

"Yes, I swear! I swear like a mare with a flare on my bare wares that I will tell nobody, at any price they may put."

"Ginger, that trip will be difficult," Gretchen cut in. "We might need an extra pair of hands."

With unappreciative eyes, she looked up at the bespectacled girl, than to the girl wearing a hopeful grin on her lap.

She finally closed her eyes, and sighed.

"…But only if you performs the Fireside Honor Pact first, Katie."

Katie's expression immediately evaporated.

"A-a-are you sure that's _really_ worth it?"

"It is if you want to know my plan, that just _coincidentally_ goes against Isabella's wishes."

Katie's eyes, wide open and unblinking, darted back and forth though the tunnels in deep thought.

"O-okay…" She rose up slowly, shivering in both body and voice. "But tell me, if I were to… participate in this plan of yours, would there be any… extra… compensations given to me, in return for taking this risk?"

"Hmm… That depends. Do you count patches as 'compensation'?"

Her eyes immediately went wide again, a new smile crossing her face. "Boy, do I! You're telling me I'll get a patch for this?"

"Discovering Something That Almost Doesn't Exist Patch is one guarantee. The Collection and Preservation of Endangered Species Patch is another. The Swinging on a Vine While Howling Patch is optional."

" _Three_ patches!?" The blonde girl squealed with glee. "Why didn't you just tell me that earlier?! Heck, I'll do the Swear right now!"

And so she went, declaring in subjective, esoteric languages, for 15 minutes without stopping, her will to not say anything about Ginger's intentions under any pressure, unless the pressure is inflicted by someone using rank over her, in which case she is cleared to report to the higher ups… and several more chapters upon general secrecy, defection, moles and others, finishing with…

"Then you, Ginger Hirano, patch number… 46321/536-E… are cleared to rip my sash from my person… with extreme prejudice and cartoonic violence, and… and give it back to me upon… a time that you may… see me fit… in redeeming myself in light… of the failure. _There._ "

She fell on her rear, panting heavily, before taking her waterskin and downing its contents in ten seconds.

But then she doubled back as the water went into the wrong side of her throat.

Ginger and Gretchen rushed to her side. "Katie? Are you okay? Can you breathe?"

She only responded with more forced coughs.

"Come on, Katie. Let it all out!"

"I'm- _cough-_ _ **trying!**_ _"_

They stood near her, patting her back to help her breathe.

"That's a good Katie. Come on, let it out."

Several minutes later, her hacks went down little by little, before it finally faded into nothingness.

"Oh…" Ginger breathed in relief. "Thank goodness that's done with."

The blonde, looking as if she didn't almost spit out her own heart into the ground several minutes ago, flashed that smile at her again.

"So, can you tell me about the plan _now?"_

* * *

The trio walked through the tunnels, each of their footsteps echoing loudly against the stone walls. Gretchen led the way, flashlight in one hand and map on the other, while Ginger and Katie walked and talked behind her, recapping (and discussing things that are only remotely related to) the entire plan.

"Yeah, I guess you're right," Katie said, putting a finger under her chin. "You'll only go to this trouble for the _deepest_ kind of love. I mean, I really want to find theone for me too for a really long time now, but apparently, looking from Isabella and you, I think I can say that if you don't feel love blindsiding you like a semi-truck going 300 miles per hour, then he as sure ain't worth the trouble."

"Precisely!" Ginger cheered, giving her friend a thumbs up. "You are getting this after all!"

Katie giggled again, then went to the girl in front.

"How about you, Gretchen?"

"Hm?"

"C'mon! You've helped Isabella with Phineas ever since we all graduated from Lil' Sparks," she asked, her voice soon taking a teasing tone. "Don't tell me you've never felt something for a _boy_ somewhere, someplace? Hmm?"

She turned her gaze back to the map. "Nope. I'm more than happy to help you people get your… 'targets' or whatever you please, but I don't plan on actually getting there myself. I think we gave some very priceless proof positives about what happens when those two see their boy wonders, and I for one, do not intend to suffer the same fate."

There was a short pause.

"…She's got a point, you know," Katie whispered to Ginger's ear.

"What point?"

"Precisely," Gretchen closed. "Anyway, we're nearly there. Should be only a couple more turns down."

Katie then ran up to Gretchen, looking up at the tunnel map from behind her shoulder. "So Gretchen, where are we going right now? Off to the HQ to get jungle-tracking gear?"

"No. That'll be too high profile for Ginger's tastes. We're going to the backup storage unit."

"Which one?"

"Not the backup storage _warehouses,_ Katie. That'll be too high profile too. We're going to the backup storage _unit._ "

"Okay… Where is this backup storage 'unit'? And how come I only heard about it now?"

"That's because none of it's official. Our budget's too thin to pay another official warehousing permit. I told her it wasn't necessary, but Isabella insisted that we can't rely on three supply warehouses alone. Says that we need to be more open-minded, to be more prepared in case we need a quick exit in another apocalyptic scenario."

"Really?" Katie raised an eyebrow. "I mean, I understand her caution, what with almost re-detonating the Toba supervolcano by accident and everything, but she specifically says three warehouses aren't enough?"

"Yep. Personally, I think it's really more because Phineas was the one who proposed it to her."

"Oh… That makes _a lot_ more sense."

The three climbed a small staircase leading up to a pair of massive wooden doors. There, Gretchen opened the 5-inch lockpad, and pushed the doors open. As they stepped outside, the sunlight came slicing down to the girls' eyes, forcing them to rest their hands below their eyebrows.

"So, Gretchen," Ginger started, gazing around at the gray and barren concrete field all around them. "Where is this backup storage unit?"

"Over there!" She pointed to a point on the ground. "Follow me!"

They followed Gretchen to the none-too-exceptional spot. Once there, Gretchen knelt and felt around the floor for a button. After several minutes of searching, she found and pushed the well-disguised button.

The dust on the ground began to wipe themselves up, making Ginger and Katie leap in surprise. Gretchen stayed on her knees, waiting. After a second, a black monitor and keyboard rose up from the floor.

The monitor said: _Please enter secret name of facility._

"And apparently it has a top secret name too," Katie quipped behind her. "Man, Isabella's secretive about this place!"

Sparing a snort, Gretchen then typed up the keywords:

 _Perfectly Hitherto Idleness Negating Emergency Apocalyptic Shelter._

She pushed the button that now lay next to the monitor. The computer then buzzed, causing it to sink back to the ground. Replacing it was a handle stuck to the floor, not unlike the one a person would find on a top side of an attic ladder. She pulled it open, revealing a metal ladder heading downwards to complete darkness.

She smiled, and stretched her arm to the ladder.

"So, who wants to go first?"

* * *

"Hey Gretchen," Katie asked as they walked down the dark hallways. "Did that secret password's acronym actually spell P—"

"Yes. Yes it did," she answered dryly. "Thank you for noticing. Isabella designed some parts of this place herself. She insisted on a _lot_ of things about this place."

She wandered around, looking for another button on the floor. When she pushed one, another machine rose up dramatically from the floor, this time a metallic table with buttons from all color spectrums peppered on its surface. She pressed the white button, and row by row, the lights started going up, revealing just how large the room actually is.

"Holy… this place is _**huge!**_ "

The shelf that Katie almost bumped herself into was not twice her height like she expected of other normal shelves; in fact, two dozen hers won't quite make that tallness.

Three hundred of those shelves sat upon the gigantic room, each carrying hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of materials, laser guns, backpacks, and other miscellaneous items upon its stacks.

"Yep. Drink it in, people." Gretchen smiled with pride. "The intention's not exactly pure, but boy it sure does its job."

The three then went on a self-guided tour around the place, searching for their own pieces of equipment. As Ginger and Katie went, they found another button-covered table.

With a grin, Katie turned to her companion.

"Hey Ginger," she said, elbowing her shoulder lightly and pointing to the table. "You wanna see what this place can really do?"

"I dunno, Katie. It's half past twelve already, and I do wanna get this done before five. It's self-serving supper time at the house!"

"Oh, come on, don't be such a fuddy-duddy!" She took her friend's hand and brought them in front of the machine. "This'll take less than seven minutes!"

"...Isn't that saying's supposed to be three minutes?"

"How should I know? I'm not a lexicon book."

When they strolled over to get a closer look, the two gaped at just how many buttons were actually on the thing.

"But... How is that even possible?" Ginger moved her hand along all the buttons, trying to make sure that they were real. "I was sure I saw at most a dozen when we were far away... How did it go into three hundred when we got closer?"

"Oh come on, Ginger, that's basic! Everyone knows you can't fit three hundred buttons on thirteen pixels of animation."

"Wh... What does that even mean?"

"You'll learn someday, girl," she said, waving her hand away. "Then you'll learn to see the world from my view. So, which one do you want to push first?"

Still unable to shake her confounded look, Ginger turned back to the table. "Oh, I dunno, Katie. Pushing buttons all willy nilly never did anyone any good."

"Perhaps so… But try to think it like this. Isabella obviously designed this place to last. Now would she be so stupid to put a self-destruct button or something like that on this place?"

"Well… no. But-"

"Come on! Just one push!"

Without waiting for further replies from Ginger, she already pressed one button at random with her fist, just as Gretchen passed by that very same hall. She ran up to them with a worried and angry look.

"Katie! Did you just push one of the buttons here!?"

"Uh... Would I get in trouble if I say yes?"

"You… Which one did you push!?"

"Well tell you the truth, I'm not exactly sure," Katie replied with an embarrassed smile, shrugging her shoulders. "I, uh… wasn't looking."

"Wh…" Gretchen shook her head hard in disbelief. "You! Seriously, if we're not sisters-in-sashes for two years, I'd be so _mad_ at you!"

Gretchen pulled out her flashlight and sweeped the light all around the table. One of the buttons glowed when the light hit it, directing the girls' stare at it.

"You pushed the deep blue one…"

She let out a sizable sigh of relief, letting her shoulders slump slightly.

"Come on, Gretchen, don't be so mad," Katie pleaded. "I mean, what's it gonna do? Make us jump all throughout the scenes on this story?"

As if she struck a nerve, Gretchen's head jumped up slightly, before turning around to give Katie a chilling glare.

"Actually, yes." Gretchen crossed her arms, obviously resisting the urge to yell at the blonde. "That's exactly what it'll do. You just pushed the Take-a-Wish button, and you just asked for the extent of its abilities. The thing's programmed to surpass every single expectation any skeptic has on its abilities! Now, it'll do everything in its power to take on _yours._ "

Three seconds passed before Gretchen looked around in silence.

"Okay, maybe the warp isn't ready yet. But thanks to you, _Katie,_ we'll soon be transported all throughout the past, present, and fut—"

A sudden blue flash erupted around them, and then the three were no more.

* * *

Gretchen opened her eyes…. Except they've been opened the whole time.

She tried to turn her head… except her moves had been choreographed to the situation.

She tried to ask something her friends… except she already opened her mouth to say something else.

She saw… in a cave. A natural pedestal, with a shining light. Purple…

"…only get 62 percent of its full effects if we stay on the very edge of—"

She felt a tap on her shoulder, and turned around.

"What is it, peo—AAH!"

Gretchen jumped out of her skin at the sight her two friends, in menacing military-grade gas masks with bright red eyes.

"Oops. Sorry."

* * *

Katie found herself opening the consciousness…

"AAH! What the heck am I doing in swinging with a grappling hook on a—"

She hit her head on a stalactite, and passed out. She plunged down hundreds of feet to the awaiting water below.

* * *

Ginger opened her eyes, which immediately went wide at the—

She contentedly accepted, and closed her eyes again.

* * *

As the three girls jumped back and forth through the snipped lines of time, a cheery tune started to play, followed shortly by a voice which chipperness surpassed even the tune it was singing along to.

 _In every group that will be formed,  
there's always the moron to boot.  
You take her in and snap! There goes your game. _

_And every task you undertake  
will be a short piece of waste.  
Of time! Of effort!  
Unless you straighten her out… _

… _from a push of a button, that makes the flow of time crumble  
the flow of time crumble-e, the flow of time crumble.  
Just a push of a button makes the flow of time crumble,  
in a most confusing way! _

_The girls mucking around the place  
has very little time to rest  
While trying to survive the plot spoilers!  
Though quite intent in their pursuits,  
They'll find that it is quite a loop  
To find,  
their way,  
back to the normalcy of time… _

_Just a push of a button, makes the flow of time crumble  
the flow of time crumble-e, the flow of time crumble.  
Just a push of a button makes the flow of time crumble,  
in a most confusing wa-ay! _

* * *

After several more nexuses and pitfalls and dips, they finally ended up on a single moment, where the flow of time resumed as normal.

* * *

"…and that, Katie, is why you don't press buttons that can set up artificial scene cuts all _willy-nilly!_ Now, not only I have no idea where we are, I'm feeling both the déjà vu and the scene whiplash breaking down on my bones!"

"Okay, okay, I'm sorry! I just can't resist the shmuck bait, that's all…"

The three Fireside Girls were walking under the forest trees, each of them more than dumbfounded as to how they got there. They agreed to sit down for a minute to get their stories straight. Gretchen sat on the edge of a cliff overlooking a lake to try to regain their bearings, while Ginger and Katie checked on the state of their newly-equipped equipment.

The leading girl sighed, putting a palm on her forehead. "Alright then, looks like we didn't end up _that_ far… Anyone have an idea where we are right now?"

Ginger looked around. "Offhand? I'd say we're at the Danville Highlands. Just before the…"

She suddenly stopped, letting out only an audible gulp.

Gretchen blinked, realizing the where the map was pointing also.

"…Right. Okay then… Check your wares, people. See that they're all waterproofed."

"Hey, anybody else want to talk about what their visions of the futures are like?" Katie asked cheerily, wrapping up her numerous holsters. "I got hit by a rock, passed out, and drowned on a waterfall!"

The two gave her a strange look.

"…That's a… nice way of putting it, Katie," Gretchen said. "Well, I saw the two of you in gas masks. Creeped me out real nice…"

"Hey! That means I've got the best one among…" Ginger said, before stopping herself yet again.

"…Hey Gretch, that button… it's supposed to let you experience snipped cutscenes from the future, right?"

"Yep. Recent future, mind you. A month at its farthest. Usually it takes you some three hours to nine days, give or take some."

Hearing this, Ginger squealed like five-year-old, a silly grin tearing through her face and her hands busy wringing each other. Looking at the strange sight, Gretchen only stared with eyes pointing up, while Katie excitedly took pictures of her with her camera.

"Look at that. Proof positive number 363. Some more from both of them and we'll fill the 700th photo spot by the end of the week!"

Gretchen turned away again, and used a pair of binoculars to search for the cave's entrance.

When she actually found it, she had nothing more to offer than a sigh and a quip.

"Right. Of _course_ it had to be on the very far side of the lake…"

She cleared her throat to interrupt her friends' vacuous activities. "Alright then people, listen up. I've found the entrance to the Cave of the Weeping Water Lily, curse whoever is so uncreative with the naming, and it's all the way down across the lake below. Yes, you heard that right."

The two stopped their mischiefs and ran up to the edge, trying to get a peek at the mouth of the cave.

"So how are we gonna get down, Gretchen?" Katie asked, looking down at the three hundred-foot drop. "Care for the old leap-of-faith style swan dive?"

"And let the water shatter my bones so the fish can have my skin and muscles for dinner? No thanks." She ruffled through Katie's pockets, and retrieved a compactly folded parachute. Waving it to the blonde, she opened it up, and strapped it on tight.

"I'm gonna glide my way in the breeze. See you girls on the other side!"

And with that, she ran off the cliff and opened her parachute, gliding gently across the large lake.

"Okay then, Katie," Ginger stretched out an arm to the blonde. "Hurry up and hand me one of those."

"Roger!" She handed the Asian girl her parachute, but showed no signs of wanting to put up her own.

"Katie? Aren't you going to put your parachute on?"

"No thanks, Ginger," she replied, pulling out a grappling hook from its holster. "It's as good a time as any for me to practice on using this thing. I for one don't plan on drowning in a waterfall today, or at any time for the rest of my life for that matter."

She swung her index finger in a wide circle, pointing all around the edges of the lake's rock walls. "I'm gonna use this baby to circle around the cliffs, swinging all the way around to the other side! Huh? Come on, what do you think?"

Ginger raised her eyebrows.

"…If you want me to be blunt? That's actually a very bad idea, in a loong line of, and I love you when I say this, very, very bad ideas."

Katie let out a dejected groan in response.

"But then again, I'm not my sister. And you've got a point in the drowning in the waterfall there, actually, so, I can only say see you there!"

Ginger waved her hand, and jumped off the edge as well, opening her parachute and joining Gretchen on cruising through the air.

"Right… let me see this baby…" Katie examined the grappling hook, rotating it back and forth in her fingers. A few minutes later, and she finally gathered up her confidence.

"Alright… let's do this thing!"

With narrowed eyes, she shot at the tree some distance on her northeastern direction. The grappling hook caught successfully on it, and after several psyching breathing exercises, she counted down to the final swing.

"Okay, Katie, get your nerves down… In 3, _2, 1…_ _**Geronimooo!**_ "

She screamed in both fear and exhilaration as the air hammered on her face. She barely had the effort to keep her tongue inside her mouth, causing her mouth to form a chesire cat-like grin; one that she gladly embraced.

" _ **Man! This is awesome!"**_

She shot and swung her way past the cliffs and trees, enjoying every last thrilling moment of it.

However, just as she began to truly enjoy herself, misfortune rears her ugly head.

As Katie aimed for the shot that marked the half point of the lake, a patch of dust particles collided with her eyeballs. In reflex, she rubbed both of her hands on her eyes, stopping the chained shots and sending her plunging into the drink.

"Oh no-no-nono! I'm going to faaallll!"

The blonde fell with a mighty splash, causing both Ginger and Gretchen to turn their heads.

"Oh man! I knew it was a bad idea!" Ginger exclaimed, looking down at the far away dot that was her fallen friend. "Hey Katie! Are you alright!?"

There was a short pause as the sound waves took their time traveling the distance.

"…I'm fine!" was the tiny echoing answer.

"You're gonna have to swim the rest of the way!

"…What!?"

"It's okay! Look on the bright side! At least you can earn your Olympic Swimmer Patch now!"

"…Okay! I understand you! …Just wait for me on the other side!"

Ginger rotated her head back to Gretchen. "Boy, this is going to make for some real delays, now isn't it?"

"Whoa, look at you, in a rush all of a sudden. What's your hurry?"

"Oh… I don't want to spoil it just yet! I just can't wait for my… tee-hee-he!"

Gretchen gave her a weird look.

"Uh-huh. I'm sure."

She looked at her wristwatch, which was pointing to 12.45 P.M.

"Still, look at the bright side, Ginger."

As if on cue, their foot gently landed on the white sands of the isle. After removing the parachute's straps, she took off her beret, and pulled out a yellow lunchbox from under it.

"At least we can have our lunches surrounded by the greatest scenery ever."

Ginger's smile returned again.

"Huh. Nice point. If it's a big delay, better make sure it's worth it…"

* * *

Some half an hour later, Ginger and Gretchen sat on a log, munching on their sandwiches under the gentle breeze and the peaceful splashing of the water. As they finished the second one, a hand crawled underneath the waves, reaching around for something to grab on.

Ginger looked up from her photo album. "Oh, there you are, Katie! What took you so long?"

Katie, soaking wet, weak and weary as a lost wig, wheezed her lungs out as she crawled on the coastline. After she made it out of the waters, she rolled on her back, and stretched out her hand to them.

"W-wa… water… please!"

Although a bit amused by the scene, they didn't spare a second in throwing her a water bottle, which she downed in less than ten seconds.

"Th-thanks…"

She raised her hand again, this time pointing a finger at Ginger's sandwich. "Can I have one of those?"

Without waiting for a reply, she snatched it out of her hands, and nibbled little pieces of it into her mouth.

"Thanks again. Man, this is _good…._ "

Ginger and Gretchen stood beside her, looking down at the water-wrecked girl. "Hey Katie, you sure you'll be alright for the rest of this? That cave will _not_ be kind to visitors you know."

"What? No, no, I'm fine… _Ju_ st need to lie down for a few minutes, that's all. And maybe some shade if you would be so kind? _Tha_ nks a third!"

The two girls looked at each other, unsure what to decide. But before long, Ginger patted Gretchen's shoulders, hiding a disappointed look behind a smile.

"Gretchen, could you take care of Katie for me for a bit? I gotta find that flower inside the cave real fast. Backinabitthanks!"

"What the- Hey, Ginger! _Wait!"_

But her warnings fell on deaf ears; the lovestruck girl just kept running deeper and deeper inside the cave.

Katie wolf whistled at her. "Whoa, look at her… rushing all of a sudden! What's her hurry?"

She only let out a sigh, taking out a full-sized umbrella from her pocket.

"Take a wild guess. Hint: It's not academic."

* * *

As Ginger went deeper inside the cave, she found the most beautiful sight in her life; that is, if it's not so dangerous.

She gaped at the sight of the cavern in front of her. Far on the northeast side was a giant waterfall, which with the help of what little light that leaked out through the ceiling, created a sparkling rainbow that hung beautifully in front of it. Stalagmites, rock faces and other structures of varying shapes and sizes surrounded it, all glittering by the drops from the waterfall hitting their faces. The massive cliffs' greenish gray coloring that contrasted with the white and the rainbows from the waterfall was simply icing on the cake.

Mouth still agape, she took a bunch of snapshots with her mobile camera. She made a mental note to bring Baljeet over here when they get together at last; this was simply too beautiful to ever miss.

But she shook her head. That bit will come… but not today. Today, she was on a mission; one that she intended to accomplish, by any means necessary.

She squinted around, trying to find something that will lead her to the elusive Water Lily. There was nothing resembling the photo on her page on the waterfall, so she directed her gaze to an opening that led to another part of the cave.

It was easy to locate, just straight across the way from where she was standing… except there was a deep ravine the width of an aircraft carrier standing between her and it. A former bridge could be seen bridging the gap once upon a time, but now it was nothing more than a piece of rotten rope holding up wood-colored moss.

She glanced to her right; the bridge won't do, but the cliffs on the other hand…

"…Huh. Well I did say 'jump right to it' to her once, now didn't I?"

* * *

"Are you sure you're fine, Katie?"

"I told you, I'm okay! This is nothing compared to Isabella's cupid arrows fiasco! If she can recover without a scratch in eleven minutes, then so can I!"

Gretchen was reluctantly supporting Katie through the corridors of the cave; the blonde was more than adamant to prove her wellness. Soon, the two found themselves in the cavern's entrance, experiencing the exact same dazzle as Ginger did minutes ago.

"Whoa… This is so…"

Katie stopped speaking, and craned her neck at a faint sound.

"Hold on a minute… Gretchen, do you hear someone jumping around…?"

"Hey look! There she is!"

Gretchen pointed to an orange streak hopping from spire to narrow spire, showing feats of agility that an average joe could only dream about. Gretchen cupped her fingers into her mouth, and called out to the girl.

"Hey Ginger! What the heck do you think you're doing?!"

The Asian girl stopped in her tracks, and turned to the two waiting girls. "What does it look like? There's no other way around! The exit's on that way! Come on, get up here with me!"

"Well, did it ever occur to you to wait for us and use Katie's grappling hook as a tightrope instead of hopping around like a rogue bunny rabbit?"

A long moment of silence passed between them.

They received no reply, nor do they need one; the sight of Ginger punching the walls of the cliff was more of a response than needed.

* * *

Several minutes later, Ginger finally reached the exit tunnel. With a series of quick gasps, she dropped on one knee. Her forehead was covered in sweat, evidently left over from the adrenaline of the heights.

"Oh, there you are, Ginger!" Katie greeted brightly. "What took you so long?"

Both Katie and Gretchen giggled both at the blonde's ironic echo. Ginger only gave them a weak glare, but kept her own head low to hide the tinge of embarrassment lighting up her cheeks.

"So, where to next, Gretchen?" She tried to sound a bit austere, but did not quite make it. Although they noticed, the laughter soon died down anyway.

"Alright then, 'Chief', there's your flower down there." Gretchen handed her a pair of binoculars.

"Where? All I see is this river."

Indeed, the tunnel beyond them was narrow, and more importantly, flooded with a raging river, rolling down to a waterfall after a good amount of twists and turns; no habitat for a delicate flower.

"Turn on the x-ray mode and zoom in 300 percent."

She pressed a button on the bridge of the binoculars and spun it around, and saw another large cavern in front of the waterfall. At the very center of it was a small patch of land, with a pedestal laying on its center. And on that pedestal, a very familiar shape sat down, gracing it like a delicate crown.

"I-I… Is that… Is that …?"

"Yep. If the photo on your page is right, that should be the ever rare Weeping Water Lily," she finished in an overdramatic tone. "Now only problem is how are we going to cross this river without getting swept away to pieces…"

"Pfft. That's easy, Gretchen!"

She pulled out a small piece of rubber from her pocket, and tugged on the string sticking out of it. It suddenly expanded into a full sized raft, complete with rows and life vests.

"So, anyone feeling for another Extreme Water Sports Patch?"

* * *

They all cheered as the boat rowed the raft past currents, rocks and narrow canals. Although there were several close calls due to the lack of crew, there were still nothing remotely damaging. However, the cheers soon vanished as the waterfall harrowed on closer.

"Hey Ginger!" Gretchen tapped the girl's shoulder. "We had our fun, but it's time for the big finish! What do we do now?"

"Yeah… I was hoping you could come up with something!"

" _ **What?"**_

"Yeah! I think we've established that I'm not really good at long-term thinking five minutes ago, Gretchen!"

Gretchen only gritted her teeth; a proper response was beyond her at this point.

"Hey, girls! I think I know what's happening! I think this is it!"

The two girls turned to Katie. "What's it?"

"Relax! I got this in the bag!"

She stepped over carefully to the front of the raft. "Come on! Grab hold of me tight!"

They did as they were told, and grabbed the blonde's belt and leg.

"Okay, Katie, what now?"

"Now? Now we wait."

The tension grew as the waterfall drew ever nearer to them. Katie stayed unfettered, while the two girls' doubts just kept increasing with each second.

"Katie… any _second now_!"

"Alright then. Time for a dance with destiny!"

"Really?" Gretchen rolled her eyes up. "Really, that's the best that you came up with? Dance with destiny, that is so-"

"Hey, do you want me to save your life or not?"

Gretchen shut her mouth immediately.

"There's a good girl. Now, hang tight!"

She reached to the holster wrapped on her waist, and pulled out a very familiar device. Seeing the gun tied on her fingers, the girls' eyes went wide.

"Oh no. _Oh no!_ Katie! _**Don't do that!**_ "

"What? Do you girls have a better idea?"

"That's not the point! We'll sink to the bottom if you go with that!"

"Trust me, girls! This is my future! This is the way it was meant to happen!"

"I think you forgot the part where you drowned to death? We won't be liking that, thank you very much."

"Well, then I'll just have to give destiny the throwdown of its life, now won't I?"

Gretchen and Ginger's screams came to a head as the raft began to tip at the tip of the waterfall. Katie, not showing fear in the slightest, shot the hook at a nearby stalactite. The hook wrapped on, and she swung out of the raft just as it began its descent.

"Alright, girls, listen up! I'll need to shoot this at least three times more so we can get low enough to jump! Don't move around too much, or the trajectory will be all messed up!"

"Sure! We're hanging for our lives here, anyway! How much do you think we can move?"

"Look out!" Gretchen pointed just ahead. "Rock pillar!"

"Hey girls?" Katie looked down and up again. "Disregard what I just said! Mess up my trajectory, like, _now!"_

"Yep, don't worry! I got it!"

Ginger swerved herself right with as much as force as she could muster, forcing the rope to lean right and narrowly evading the tall rock pillar.

Katie then let the rope go from the gun. She waited several seconds before shooting again, shaving off some altitude from the ground. As they swung around the cavern, Gretchen pointed to the front again.

"I hate to be redundant, Katie, but there's that rock pillar again!"

"Well we'll just do what we did last time! _Lean!_ "

And went they did again round the pillar.

Katie fired off the final shot to the ceiling; the small speck of an island was but a mere 15 feet away from their feet.

"Wait a minute…" Gretchen muttered, looking up to where Katie fired off, sounding afraid in response to the unnatural crack on the cave's ceiling. "Katie… did you just hit a fissure point?"

"Uh… so what if I did?"

Gretchen looked up again, then turned a dead stare on Katie.

"With that hook? Should be nothing except a 50 foot stalactite falling down 300 feet and landing on the point of our maximum amplitude, causing instant collision and loss of consciousness on account of severe force administered on our cranial areas on impact.

'What does that even mean?"

" _ **Stalactite!"**_

Ginger didn't bother to preserve her friends' hearing capacities, on the account of being terrified by a gigantic stalactite that was loosening quickly from its place by a crack made by Katie's hook. Before long, it fell down and set upon a one-way crash course, straight to their front.

"Oh boy… I should've aimed it a bit better."

"Yes. Yes you should."

"That thing's too big! There's no way around it!"

"And, it'll land just as we reach the end of our swing, breaking our skulls in a thousand fractures!"

The two stared at Gretchen with an inquisitive look.

"…What? I'm expressing how I feel by stating the cold hard facts."

"Well do you have a fact that can help us take down this rock?"

"As a matter of fact, I do! Because under Clause 343 Article 58 Section 32 Clause 99…"

"Gretchen, if you have any secret weapons, don't bother putting 'em up after we're crushed!"

"Hold on, just let me finish! I am herebyclearedtouseweaponsthatmightendangerthesurvivabilityofnonthreatlivingbeingsasis statedbyFiresideGirlsCodexandAdvancedManuaSection1 _**there!**_ "

Gretchen pulled out a ray gun from her pocket and fired at the looming stalactite. As soon as the beam made contact, the gargantuan piece of rock disintegrated into nothingness, clearing the way for their entrance.

They screamed one last time as they plunged and stumbled down the beachline. When they finally settled down on firm grounds, Ginger saw fit to launch some inquiries to her friend.

"You have a disintegrator ray gun on your _pockets?"_

"Well… yeah."

Silence.

"…what the... How? Why?"

She only laughed at the question.

"I would say I was carrying it around ever since Isabella's cupid arrows fiasco, but in all earnest, don't tell me you already forgot the Fireside Girls' one motto, Ginger?"

Chuckling all the way through, she twirled the ray gun like something out of a cowboy movie.

"Never forget the one motto that makes you a Fireside Girl, Fireside Girl! Fireside Girls are always prepared!"

Ginger felt an eyelid twitch by a combination of Gretchen's antics and words.

"…okay. I'll buy that... I think..."

"Hey! Wait a minute! I have a question!"

Katie stuck her hand in the air as she went up on her feet, shaking her head clear of sand.

"That machine... my future says that I should've drowned on the lake! Not that I'm not glad or anything, but why on earth didn't it really happen?"

Gretchen laughed gently, waving her hand around.

"Please. It doesn't create the _future_ , Katie. It creates _approximations_ of the future. After all, there are no future but the ones we make for ourselves."

Hearing the line, the blonde muffled a light chuckle.

"Whoa… A poetic _and_ heavy-handed message! My favorite!"

"Heh. Yeah, I- Hey, where's Ginger?"

Gretchen spun around, and gasped when she sighted Ginger walking in a trance towards the flower lying on the pedestal.

"H-hey! _Ginger!_ _**Stop!**_ "

She gritted her teeth and ran up to Ginger, pulling the enthralled girl forcibly by the rear of her collar. Ginger barely snuck out a gasp before her back hit the sand.

She then turned her head to Gretchen, a cold glare steeling her pupils.

"Hey! What was that for!?"

"I could ask you the same question. Didn't you bother to read the paper?"

"Yeah! That's how I know it's here! Now let go!"

"No can do. I can't let you go blind. Not yet anyway…"

Ginger chuckled, faintly closing her eyes. "Oh, Gretchen, Gretchen, Gretchen… when will you ever let a girl go _free?_ "

"Very funny, Ginger. I'll let that slip because you're now under a love stupor. But I'm a tough person. I'll still have your best interests at heart, even when you say hurtful things to me."

She turned to Katie, motioning to take her place in keeping the girl restrained. As she stood up, she took a pebble, and aimed upwards to the ceiling, making hand motions from the rock to the Weeping Water Lily.

Ginger's eyes turned wide as soon as she could lift her head up.

"What are you… What are you doing!?"

"Katie! Keep her steady."

"Uh, Gretch?" Katie lifted a worried eyebrow. "You're not going to throw that pebble to the flower now… right?"

"Trust me, I know what I'm doing!"

Ginger writhed and wriggled with more and more force from Katie's fingers, and finally slid out at the very last moment; just as the pebble shot off to the air, before falling down straight to the beautiful white lily.

The world fell into slow-motion as Ginger stretched both hands in a vain attempt to seize the stone, all the while forming a large 'no' in the process. After a very long, yet very brief moment, Katie caught up to her and grabbed her in a full-nelson, precisely as the stone struck the lily on its yellow center.

With a whimper, Ginger closed her eyes and turned her head away, refusing to see the ruined flower.

"What the…" she heard Katie whisper.

"…huh?"

"Ginger… open up."

After a bit of prodding, and a sudden spike of hotness running through her eyes, she finally complied.

Ginger froze when she saw purple smoke erupting from the flower.

"Back off, people!" Gretchen pushed them back with the back of her hand. "That's a biohazard! Code TG!"

"Tear gas?"

"I told you, you don't understand all of the things written on that paper, Ginger. It never got the chance to reproduce, because if something touches it harder than a feather fluttering down, it'll start spewing a modified version of capsaicin all over the place!"

She smacked her head at the confused expressions aimed at her.

"An active ingredient in tear gas and pepper sprays. That's why they call it the _Weeping_ Water Lily, people."

A long 'ohh' went through the cave.

"Yep. And the only way to make it spew from a distance without ruining it is if you hit the center. Those things can get back up from anything!

"W-wait a minute…" Ginger asked in a low voice. "D… Does this mean…"

"You see now, Ginger?" Gretchen stifled a cough from the sharp, spicy scent. "If I… If I let you take that lily out of its place, you'll be hit full force with the gas. It'll blind you for a good hour, and cause you to cough so hard it'll burn your throat out for a week!"

She wiped a twinkle of a tear from her eye.

"I can't let you go through that… not when you have a boy to impress."

There was a moment of silence.

"Oh my… G-Gretchen, I…"

"It's okay, Ging. I told you; you're in a love stupor back then, All pardoned."

"Aww, Gretchen... Thank you! I swear, I'll make it up to you later!"

"Heh. Yeah, I am _so_ nice at heart," she said half-sarcastically. "Anyway, we need to keep our distance," she said, turning back to the purple gas pillar emitted by the flower. "If my estimates are correct, we should only get 62 percent of its full effects, if we stay on the very edge of—"

She felt a tap on her shoulder, and turned around.

"What is it, peo—AAH!"

Gretchen jumped out of her skin at the sight of two girls on her back, who out of nowhere wore glowing, red-eyed gas masks.

"Oops, sorry. Didn't mean to startle you."

"Katie? H-where did you get those?"

"Ginger bought five," she pointed to the second girl.

"Just like you said, Gretchen!" Ginger said to her, raising her hand and waving it around. "Fireside Girls are always prepared!"

She chuckled. "Yep. You remembered after all…"

Katie handed her one of the gas masks. "You want one, tough gal?"

With another cough, Gretchen snatched the mask from her hands. "Seriously, don't you people even bother to… Ah, you know what, I'm not even gonna say it."

She put the mask on, and blew three times to let the gas out.

"Hey, hey!" Katie called out. "Check what this thing does to my voice! Quick, quick, think of quotes from people with gas masks!"

"Ooh-ooh-ooh!" Ginger replied enthusiastically. Uh, oh, I know this one! Uh…"

" _I find your lack of seriousness disturbing."_

The two stopped moving, and slowly turned their heads at Gretchen's booming voice.

"…What?" she replied, shrugging her shoulders. "I just thought of quotes from people with gas masks."

Silence.

"…technically, it's a breathing apparatus, Gretchen."

"Uh-huh. Whatever makes you happy, Katie. Now, gloves, gloves… Ah, there we are…"

Gretchen pulled two arm-long gloves from her pockets and put them on, snapping the rubber several times on her upper arm.

"Next up… container. Ginger?"

The summoned girl stepped up to the pedestal. She held a medium-sized plastic bowl on her hands, containing water that takes up half of its space.

"Okay… keep it steady…"

Gretchen took a wide scoop and carefully extracted the lily from its spire, with its soil, root, and flower as a whole. She dropped it in Ginger's bowl, who promptly took out a lid to close it.

When the plant fell to the water, it began to blow bubbles inside it. The flower's tear gas slowly dissipated, transforming into tears of water raining down to the small pond below.

The three chanted 'aww!' simultaneously.

Ginger stuttered bare pieces of words, at a loss of words at the prize.

"This is… this is just…"

"This is just perfect, Ginger," Gretchen finished, patting her on the back. "And what's more, you'll have the honor of carrying your own personal trophy."

"Now come on, let's find a way out of here, huh?"

* * *

 _2 days later, at Baljeet's house.._

The little crowd placed their gift boxes at the pyramid, which Baljeet examined throughly for possibilities, although he restrained himself from opening them right there.

Gretchen whispered to Ginger, "Why did you wrap the pot in paper, Ginger?"

"Traditional conforming uniformity," she replied tersely, placing her gift on the side of the pile.

"Oh..." She nodded her head. "Fair enough."

When the small assembly split around the back yard to get the snacks, Ginger found herself sitting alone in a table. Soon enough, a guest joined her there.

"Why sitting alone, Ginger? The party's over there."

"Oh, hi there... I'm.. just worried is all."

"Heh. First birthday gift, huh?"

"Yeah." Ginger lay her head on her hand. "I'd suppose you know about it better than most."

"Indeed. But I need to ask you; why did you keep it secret from me?"

"W-what?" She furrowed her eyebrows. "How did you..."

"Katie told me everything. The waterfall, the lake, the time machine... Heh, and before you storm up to her to talk court of the oath, you should really read up on the fine print, Ginger."

Isabella pulled out a small book and opened up a page in its middle. "Any Fireside Girls Swear of Secrecy taken prior to the task at hand, unless directly stated otherwise by the demanding party, is rendered void if the secret portion of the task has been deemed complete. See?"

Ginger gaped for a full three seconds before smacking a palm into her forehead.

"Relax, Ginger. I get your logic, however insulting that logic is. I once thought like that when we were 6! Albeit with a completely different set of circumstances, of course. Just one question, though..."

"Hm?"

"Katie told me it's a pot with a flower. Do you think wrapping an extremely rare flower in gift wrapping is a really good idea?"

"Relax, I'm not stupid," she said, waving her hand away. "I followed the Flowers section of the Wrapping Vulnerable Objects in the Manual to a T. If they say it'll hold a week, then you can bet it'll hold for four hours."

"Okay, I'll buy that... But why wrap it in the firat place? Why not put it in a basket, or bring it just as it is?"

"Traditional conforming uniformity."

"Huh?"

"Social conventions," she said dryly. "I betted I'll be the only one bringing an unpackable gift, so I thought why not conform? I don't wanna be too upfront and high-and-mighty like. Besides, when he unwraps the gifts, can you imagine his surprise? There he'll be, opening one random gift tagged by my name, and..."

Ginger squinted when Isabella shot her a knowing smile.

"What?"

"You can drop the act, Ginger. You just said that _I_ know it better than anybody."

She dropped a false chuckle. "What are you talking about?"

Isabella only kept the sweet stare up, which made Ginger more nervous by every second. Finally, she hit the final straw, and confessed her thoughts.

"Okay, I admit it!" She groaned, burying her head under her hands. "I'm shivering over it! I can't stand that _my_ gift will just be one among the pile! Even if it is just for a few hours more!"

"Aww... There, there, Ginger." She patted her unfortunate friend's head. "You can let it out. It's fine!"

Isabella raised a sudden eyebrow. "...Hm. This must be how Gretchen feels everytime she did this. I admit, it feels pretty nice. Bet I-"

Her mouth was silenced and her face scrounged up a bit when she hit a bit of a realization.

"Wait... If I'm in that position, then she... Tsk, nah! It must be the spirit of kindness! Yeah, that must be it."

Looking down on her friend, Isabella put a finger to raise Ginger's chin.

"Hey, try to think at it this way. You know you had the most heart, effort and thought set upon that gift, right?"

"...yeah. I took every account. He'll..."

"Then he'll love it, by any way accountable, because all your work will show on that."

"You... you really think so?"

"Yeah, and for more than just the cheesiness of that line. See, you know him better than most. Ergo, you'll know better what makes him happy. Am I right?"

"T-that's... a pretty good point, actually."

And besides, you know what they say..."

She slid her a glass of soda from across the table. When Ginger took it in her hand, she lifted her own glass into the air.

"If you don't succeed..."

Ginger looked up to her, before muttering a reluctant reply.

"You try and try again."

"That's my girl!" She chuckled lightly. "Look, I still think it's a little weird and silly about who your heart picked out, but who am I to argue about the heart's pickings? Don't worry, if you need any help, you can call on any of us. Juat like how I call all of you when I need help!"

She sighed, but still returned the smile sincerely. "Thanks Chief. Glad I can count my world on you now."


	2. Red Rashes Roller Round

_**Okay, I think I got a hang on this story's schedule. I'll try to update twice per month, once on the 8th and once on the 26th. Pray tell if you have comments; they'd be greatly appreciated.**_

* * *

"Oh my goodness... Ow, just look at her!" She gritted her teeth and winced.

"She is so... celebrity-y!"

Candace was lying down on her bed, sighing at the model on the spread of her magazine. She tried several awkward positions to keep the red blisters on her body from ruining the view, and was apparently satisfied with the results.

"What I wouldn't do for a dress that beautiful."

A knock from the door interrupted her thoughts before a head stuck itself out from the door's gap.

"Candace?" Her mother called out. "Are you feeling okay, sweetie?"

"For now," she answered with an uncertain sigh. "Probably because it's 6 a.m and I'm letting the windows open so I can catch some cool morning breeze. But yeah, I think I'm gonna have some serious scratching problem in the next couple of hours."

"Well, don't worry about that. I've put some powder to keep the itchiness down in your closet. And as for keeping yourself company..."

A heaving sound was heard as Linda came in with a medium-sized box to the side of her bed. "Your brothers told me to give you this."

"Hey mom?" Phineas' voice called out from the doorway. "Ferb and I really want to see how Candace is doing there. Can we come in?"

"No, Phineas! No you can't!" Both Candace and Linda answered simultaneously.

"But mom..."

Sighing, she stepped back out to the doorway. "Boys, I thought we've talked about this. Chickenpox is really contagious! That's what the doctor tells us."

"But he also said it's okay if we had vaccines. We had ours when we were 6 months old!"

"So did she, boys. And look what happened to her."

She pointed to Candace, whose entire skin was covered in hundreds upon hundreds of sickly red dots. Her arms twitched every once in a while, obviously resisting the pull to scratch the resistant itch away from her blisters.

Meanwhile, being left alone, the teen chuckled again as she flipped another page from the tabloid. "Hah! That judge deserved that fall below the bridge, alright!"

"See? I really, really don't want that to happen to you boys."

The brothers sighed, lowering their heads in disappointment. "So we won't be able to see her at all?"

"Not until every bit of red's clean off her skin. Heh, or when you can get some hazmat suits, for that matter," she said jokingly as she went down the stairs. "Now I need to get some medicines from the pharmacy. That nasty cold you two had last week really put our supplies on the down low. Let your sister rest while I go, okay?"

"Okay mom! See you soon!"

As Linda went out to the garage, Phineas put a finger on his chin. "Hazmat suits, eh?"

He pointed a sly eye to his brother. "Ferb?"

And there was Ferb, holding two pieces of rubber suits on his hands.

"Perfect! Let's go."

* * *

Candace was reviewing the videos on her phone when yet another annoyance knocked on her door. With a groan, she answered, "Who is it?"

"It's us!"

She nearly jumped right out of her bed when she saw the two horribly creepy-suit wearing boys, complete with an ear-splitting scream to boot.

"Relax, sis!" Phineas pushed a button on the collar, turning on the lights inside the mask.

"What the... Phineas... and Ferb?"

"That's us! How ya feeling, sis?"

Frowning, she dunked the pillow on her face, which helped stifle another frustrated groan from her. "What do you two want?"

"Just to wish you well. And you know, see how our sister's doing."

"I was doing pretty fine until you showed up," she answered dryly. "Hey, didn't mom tell you not to come in here? If you're itching for a bust..."

Phineas only chuckled. "Relax, Candace. Mom said we can't come in if we didn't have a protective suit on. She's worried we'd catch your disease."

"Oh, that makes a lot more sense," she said with biting sarcasm. "I thought Halloween was coming in two months early."

"Nah, we're not planning on doing that. Halloween on summer's a good idea, but there's a certain magical sense on October 31st that you won't get on the middle of July."

"Good for you then, _Phineas_. Good for you, then."

"Oh, and by the way, have you checked our gift box? It's got plenty of things to keep the itching and boredom away."

"Thanks, but no thanks. I anticipated this well in time, and I already prepared myself."

She pointed to the stack of laughing jokes and love guide magazines on her bedstand. "And on top of that..."

With a great effort, she lifted a box that was the same height as her entire upper half and three times as wide from under her bed onto her mattress.

"Wow. That's a large box."

"Why yes, yes it is. I found this box three days ago when I was cowering in horror in the Panic Room. Stamped from three years ago!"

Seeing the (actually-not) accusing stares from her siblings, she retorted, "What? You'd panic too if suddenly red spots decided you're the new polkadot fashion trendsetter! Which I'm definitely not."

She sighed as she opened the box just enough for her to see. "Now you two aren't gonna get any peeks in here anytime soon, but I can tell you that the contents are just _perfect_ for me. Well, maybe except for this, though..."

She pulled a much smaller wooden box out of the cardboard one. The box had only two discernible features; the small safe combination wheel on its center, and a sizable label saying _'Number 34'_ below the wheel.

"See? This thing's locked and I can't open it. I think I had the combination 3 years ago, but now I can't remember it!"

"That box? We can open it for you! Just give us a half an hour and we—"

"Oh-no-no-no!" She wrenched the small box back from Phineas' hands. "You're not getting anywhere near this box, or whatever's inside!"

A small pause.

"Okay, I actually don't really know what's inside, but judging from the rest of what's inside this large box, you're definitely way too young to know whatever's inside of this one!"

"Hmm. Good reasoning. Well, we'll let you keep our box anyway just in case. Besides, I think I already know what we-"

"NO!" she suddenly shouted, slapping a hand on Phineas' mask-blocked mouth. "Under no circumstances will you be allowed to do anything at all today!"

"But-"

"Look at it this way, Phineas. Mom said to you that you should let me rest, right?"

"...yes?"

"Then you will let me rest. By not making any noises or sights of antics and messes or _general presence_ on the premises, that will ruin my relaxed and tranquil state of mind. Do you understand me, Phineas?"

"Uh... I think so..."

"Good! Then we have an understanding." She patted their shoulders and pushed them out to the door, all without standing up. "And remember, any noises, and mom's gonna be here to bust you guys!"

Feeling too much danger of awakening the itches on her feet to close the door herself, she pulled on the string she knotted on the doorknob three days ago.

"There we go. And mom said that wouldn't work."

Meanwhile, outside the room, Phineas was touching his fingers together in thought.

"So, Candace says we can't build anything where she can see or hear us..."

But then he snapped his fingers at an eureka moment. "Hey, I got an idea! Why not do it in Baljeet's house instead? That way, she can rest up in peace while we can still do our work for her!"

Ferb nodded.

"So it's decided then. We'll call the guys and tell them where we're going to set up! Ferb, I know where we're going to do what we're going to do today!"

Inside the room, Candace felt a sudden shiver running on her spine.

"Wait a minute... Did I just say..."

She counted every syllable of every word she said a few minutes ago with her fingers. "...or sights of antics and messes or _general prese-_

 _Silence._

 _"Ohh..."_

She simply let out a small sigh.

"...Rule 51, Candace. Ambiguous wordings will bring instant _failure_."

She allowed her palm to smack her own forehead many, many times before looking around.

"Hey, where's Perry?"

* * *

Hearing his cue, Perry stood up on two legs, donned his fedora, and walked down the hallway until he reached Candace's door. He punched in several code numbers on the invisible keypad attached to the wall, and got inside the elevator hidden behind it.

When the elevator arrived to his lair, he took off the rubber skin suit he wore with a zipper, and hung it on a glass case. A few seconds later, smoke puffed out on every edge of the case to decontaminate it.

"There you are, Agent P," Major Monogram greeted. "Say, is that the Special Disease-Proof Suit you just put in our storage? What were you using it for?"

"Sir, didn't you look at the footage?" Carl interrupted him. "One of his owners got chickenpox!"

"Chickenpox?" His monobrow raised itself up high. "The one where you get red itchy dots all over you, making you look like the new polkadot fashion trendsetter even though you're really not?"

"Yep, that's the one sir."

"Ooh! That's harsh." The Major winced, bringing his fingers close to his lips. "My sympathies, Agent P."

Perry nodded his head as a gesture of acceptance.

"You know, I once got chickenpox back when I was 7 years old. Coincidentally, that was the first week that I trained to apply at..." He pointed a fist level to his face and sucked his lips inside his mouth, adding a dramatic pause for effect... _"The Academy."_

Perry craned his head around, searching for where the somber piano tune was coming from. But soon, it was abruptly cut off, and the Major went with the briefing.

"Anywho, Doofenshmirtz has been taking up a few dozen thesaurus and dictionary books all throughout Danville, in addition to numerous guides on stalling on things. Whatever crazy, tongue-and-brain-twisting word and/or works he wants to know and/or avoid, we are very sure that it will not be used for good. Get to it, Agent P!"

The agent saluted, and blasted off his lair on his hovercraft.

As silence fell onto the room, Major Monogram darted his eyes around.

"Carl! Ready the Special Disease Containment Bunker!"

"The one that you only use if there's a zombie plague on the world?"

"Yes, exactly!" The Major got off camera to fetch a hazmat suit. "I will not be caught with that cursed disease ever again!"

Then that piano tune started mysteriously playing throughout the Major's office. Carl went to the computer, but then Major Monogram yelled from the room across him.

"And don't you dare shut off that computer piano, Carl!"

* * *

"Thanks for letting us use your house as the venue for today, Baljeet."

"Oh, please, it is no trouble," he said, moving over a table full of tools into the backyard. "My sympathies on your sister's condition."

"Thanks! We'll pass them along to her once we're done here. Oh, by the way, how did you get the stuff set up so fast?"

"These things? Just leftovers from my daily checks on barometric readings, weather predictions and the stability of the space-time continuum."

"You check the stability of the space-time continuum everyday?"

"Among other things, yes. What if some maniac suddenly decided that they can loop back time through the same day over and over again? Then, they will lose their loved ones thanks to the rips in the space time continuum that they have caused, and then they will have to come to me, because I will be the only one who is prepared! Ha-ha! I will be hailed as a hero, and-"

Silence.

"Baljeet..."

"Oops! I forgot! Agreed relevant timeline!" He chuckled awkwardly." Right. My apologies. Now, we know that neither Buford nor Isabella will come at anytime earlier than 7.30 unless it's a special extended episode, so tell me what are we doing today that requires such earliness?"

"That my friend, is simple. Come along, and we'll show you!"

* * *

 _Doofenshmirtz Evil Incorporated!_

"Ooh, ooh look, here he comes now. And… _catch!"_

Doofenshmirtz threw the baseball to Norm, who was waiting with a baseball bat gripped tight. He whacked the ball at bullet speed through the skylight, punching Perry's cruising hovercraft right out of the sky. The platypus fell out of his vehicle and landed right onto Doofenshmirtz's operating table/rectangular cage.

"So Norm, does that satisfy your needs?" the evil scientist asked with a surly tone.

"Yes! Yes it does."

"Good. And Perry the Platypus, does _that_ satisfy _your_ needs? Hmm?"

Perry can only do nothing but chatter to respond.

"Great to hear it! I trapped Perry the Platypus, and secured Norm's loyalty for another four months! That's what you call stabbing a man with a double-edged fork!"

At the strange looks he got from both parties, he retorted, "What? You guys haven't heard that saying before? Man, where've you guys been on the days?"

He formed a small groan before walking up to Perry's trap. "So, Perry the Platypus, you see, if you could talk, you'd be able to help me with a certain conundrum I've encountered just yesterday…"

The lair around them faded away from existence as the scene flashed back to 3 p.m yesterday.

"So, I had my gathering ideas for tomorrow session as usual for the day, and as usual, I came up empty for three hours straight. But then, this magic word popped up to my brain, just one word that makes my skin crawl in endearment and vilification. One word that riddles my brain for ages to come, and yet could not play a more important role to this scheme I've put up today. Would you like to know what word that is, Perry the Platypus?"

Before Perry could begin to roll his eyes at his (lack of) choice, Doofenshmirtz already revealed the answer in a gigantic board, with the word written in gigantic letters.

"That word is… _**PLACEHOLDERS!**_ "

Silence.

"Now don't get me wrong, I'm dying to tell you how this word alienated me until this very second, but I can't, because the word's too busy alienating me for much more than just _one_ very-second. I mean, this thing's been in my head for like, 36.000 very-seconds! Can you think the burden of that going on in your brain?"

He turned toward his giant robot man, a hand positioned under his chin. "Hey Norm, pop that definition for placeholders at me again."

"Placeholder, noun. Something used or included temporarily or as a substitute for something that is not known or must remain generic; that which holds, denotes or reserves a place for something to come later."

Doofenshmirtz just looked at him with a flat mouth and eyes half-closed for a long 30 seconds.

"…That's literally the 5.896th time since yesterday that you tell me those exact words _in that exact order,_ and I still don't understand what the heck you're saying. Do you get what the heck he's saying, Perry the Platypus?"

Perry still hasn't shrunk his eyes from their widened state at how fast Norm announced the definition, or how Doofenshmirtz managed to catch any of that in the first place.

"I ask you, Perry the Platypus I can hear and understand the words coming out of his mouth, but I can't understand its meaning! Now what good will that do?"

* * *

"Yeah well, what can we say?" Phineas replied, jumping down with Ferb from the top of the device. "There can be only one full song per episode on that show, Baljeet."

"Hmm. That is a valid point. But you have not exactly described the function of this invention either… what is this thing?"

But before Phineas could answer, he was interrupted by the backyard fence opening, revealing Buford and Isabella behind it.

"Hey wimps!" Buford started, a sly smile crossing his face. "So, you already got me crossing three blocks twice before sending a warning message to my phone, all in a misguided attempt to tire me down for no reason at all. So let me ask ya… _what'cha doi—_ ah-a-ha!"

Buford caught Isabella's incoming elbow in a blur, then wove it around her eyes to taunt her.

"See this, girly? It's called a misunderstandin'. I was saying what'cha doin' to the _nerd_ , not the triangle head. Ya heard?"

Isabella's angry expression turned into surprise, then bewilderment, then calm.

"Huh... well, I, uh… I guess that's kinda alright." She retracted her arm from Buford's grip. "Carry on."

"So, Baljeet, to resume, what'cha doin'?"

Baljeet only blinked twice before turning back at Phineas.

"He has not even explained it to me yet, Buford. Phineas, if you would kindly enlighten us?"

"Right. This contraption, my friends, allows us to teleport anywhere we like on every single last corner of the globe. With this, we can get supplies that we need to create a cure for Candace that we won't get in Danville, or the rest of the United States."

"Candace's sick?" Isabella piped up. "With what?"

"With chickenpox, duh!" Buford answered. "Seriously, keep up with the news, girl!"

"And how exactly did you know that before me? The girl who lives across their street?"

"I have my methods," he answered calmly, taking his phone out of his pocket. "So, where's our first stop, Dinner Bell? My trigger finger's itching for a photo shoot already!"

"Well the first one is always the rarest one; Athens, Greece. We need some of the Greek Fire stocked in their underground tunnels to make sure the serum's catalyzed just right."

"Greek Fire? As in the fire that the Byzantines used to hold back the Saracens in the 7th Century?" Buford clapped his hands and licked his mouth. "I can smell the seawater-flavored bacon already!"

"I know, right? We can get some extra if they're feeling generous. Then, we can make exotic foods for tomorrow!"

They all stepped inside the machine and sat down on the chairs. Ferb typed in the coordinates on the computer, and the machine glowed bright green as it initialized the teleportation.

"Strap in and lean back, people!"

And with a push of a button and a flash of a green light, they were all but gone from sight.

* * *

"So, tell me, what do you think?" Doofenshmirtz said as he clapped his hands, making the stage, costume, and backup singers vanish from the lab. "Too bad only you can hear it, Perry the Platypus. But that's what you get when someone else beat you to the rights of singing a full song."

"Don't worry, sir! We still have—"

"Yeah, I told you a couple weeks back Norm, what we saw at the Futures-Inator stays at the Futures-Inator!"

"Yes, sir! Whatever you say!"

"Ridiculous piece of junk. Anyway, I haven't even told you what my Inator is yet! Silly me. Well then, behold, Perry the Platypus! My Placeholders-Inator!"

The doctor pulled the covers away from his latest maniacal machine, covered in a black and green paint scheme.

"Again, as we have discussed before, I haven't exactly pinned down what placeholders really mean, but this Inator, to the best of my knowledge, I _think_ that it will take any ongoing event that goes out of boundaries, no matter how ridiculously small, lucky or weird that overstep is, and end it with the most generic, predictable outcome possible. Do you understand that?"

Perry nodded, but not to respond to Doofenshmirtz's question; he was trying to take his hat off his head.

"Well, me neither. Alright Norm, test firing time! Wait wait, hold on, let me get some popcorn first!"

"Holding on, sir! Make a partial nut-tasting flavor for my squirrel, if you would!"

"Noted!"

Just a few seconds after Doofenshmirtz went inside the kitchen, Perry's hat came off flying from his head. In the air, it spun around like an electric saw as small blades spurted out of it. In moments, the cage was cut in half, and Perry leapt off the table in the direction of the Inator.

"Whoops!" Norm said as he turned around. "Looks like our prisoner has escaped! Boy, he sure moves fast when no one has eyes on him. Just like a certain statue I know!"

Perry took another leap and kicked Norm on his head. Although it didn't cause any meaningful impact to the large robot, it did make him stumble backwards, right to the fire button on the Inator.

"Whoops again! Sir, it appears that we have fired off the machine a bit too early!"

"What?" A groan was heard from the kitchen. "Oh man! I didn't even get to put the corns in the microwave!"

* * *

"Yep, that didn't work either, Stacy," she said to the phone.

Candace sighed, staring absently at the wondrous, mysterious box Number 34. "We've tried everything. My entire family's birthday, yours, Jeremy's, and pretty much everyone we remembered from three grades back. So what else could be the code?"

"Hmm. Maybe we need to think different," Stacy replied.

"Alright then, let me see… think different, think different, think…"

Out of nowhere, a green beam crashed with the box, leaving a bit of green smoke on its place. But when Candace looked back at the box, its lock had been disengaged, leaving its lid loose with a small opening.

"Heh! What do you know? Thinking different does work!" She chuckled, waving at the sky. "For once, the mysteriously unpredictable and ungeneric flow of events has come to help _me_ instead!"

After some more cheering sessions, she finally calmed down enough to open the lid.

"Alright, Stace, I'm opening the… Stacy? Stacy?"

Hearing the line shutting down, she put the phone back on her table.

"…Hm. Looks like we got cut off. Oh well. Let me see…"

Candace opened to see the box's somewhat dusty contents, and gawked helplessly at the object held within.

"Whoa… I remember these…"

She didn't bother holding back a nefariously giddy grin.

As she giggled, she slipped on her bunny shoes and ran around the house, taking things to ready the device.

"Rug, soaps, ice pieces, cold water, then lock the door. Come on, Candace, your itches won't wait for you!"

* * *

"I gotta say, that 'splitting the teleporter in two' feature looks redundant when we first came up with it, but it's really coming in handy now!"

Phineas, Ferb, and Isabella were sweeping the rocky base of Mount Kilimanjaro with handheld scanners, each looking for something to find inside the ground.

"We gotta hurry, it must be like 11.30 in Danville already. Wonder how Buford and Baljeet's doing with the rope."

Phineas' scanner beeped and flashed green on his feet as he finished that sentence.

"Huh. What an unbelievable stroke of luck."

The boy went down on one knee with a grounddigger machine in hand. Once he dug six feet under the ground, he found what he was looking for. He took the shiny object and put it inside a small, one-capacity jewel box.

"Here we go... A naturally cut and processed 2-inch diamond piece."

Isabella and Ferb looked down at the sparkling gem sitting inside the box, twinkling the sunlight on their eyes.

"Whoa... It's so beautiful!"

"I know, right? Hey! Speaking of beautiful, I know that you said that you love these things, right?"

She gasped.

"D-did you really say I... You meant the diamond. Yeah, sure. I won't deny it's pretty."

"Good! Now, I'm going to need your help with this."

"Really?" Her eyes widened again. "You think I'm best... for you?"

"Sure, you'll do fine! Now, my pockets are full with the vials from the tomb. Can you carry this diamond for me?"

He held the box in front of her, one hand holding its lid open and the other holding the bottom of the box.

"Wh.. I.."

It wasn't long before she clamped a hand over her mouth and breathed in quick gasps, before falling over on his arm, eyes closed with a smile.

"What the... That's the third time in five months! What did I say? What did I do?"

"Have you truly no clue?" Ferb spoke up, taking and opening up the folded tarry from his pocket. "You're standing on one knee with an open box containing a piece of jewelry, looking up to the eyes of a girl who's standing tall in front of you, in one of the most beautiful sunset venues of the world."

Silence.

"How would I know, Phineas? Girls are the world's biggest mystery."

* * *

"Hurry up, Norm! Get him!"

Norm ran up to the platypus, but Perry continually dodged every punch the robot threw at him.

"Oh come on, you're hopeless!"

But he himself was soon struck with an idea as he turned his head to the Placeholders-Inator.

"The Inator! I'll blast myself with it to end the event!"

With an evil laugh, he readied the Inator to fire, then stepped in front of it, blasting himself with a bright green ray. After a few seconds, Doofenshmirtz opened his eyes and looked around his limbs and body.

"Well I don't feel any different… and I'm not really sure if that's a good or bad thing."

He decided which one it was when he saw Perry charging up to him.

"Definitely bad! Definitely bad!"

As much as the situation looks like it is at hand however, Perry's run came to a short end when a set of wires suddenly burst out of the ground and tied him down.

"What the…" Doofenshmirtz lifted his head from his hands, and walked up to the agent. "But how is that possible? The predictable ending is him beating me up, right?"

"Don't you know, sir?" Norm answered from beside him. "During this period of time on every encounter, Perry the Pla—"

"Yeah yeah, whatever Norm, I'm not gonna look a gift trap in its insides. Now, I'm free to use the Inator anyway I like!"

A wahoo and a jumping stroll later, Doofenshmirtz saw fit to do another evil laugh as he went to his Inator.

And fate saw fit to kill his moment by hanging some wires on his foot.

His laughter turned into a loud yelp as he tripped and fell to the ground. "Oow! Who puts a wire when I'm busy jumping in—"

He stopped talking as another realization struck him.

"Oh... Oh I get it. Big surprise and laughs for everyone!" He grunted as he lifted himself up. "Where there's injury to the head, there will always be injury to the head! Veery predictable."

Only when he looked up did he realize that he just hit his head on the Inator, and that it fired off a beam to the sky as a result.

"Oops. Wonder where that shot's gonna end up."

"Well sir, if I may, according to the angle of fire, it may end up hitting an abandoned bell tower somewhere on the outskirts of Lisbon, Portugal."

"Really? Huh. I was thinking more of a suburban backyard. You know, those green things at the back of a house, and maybe with a big tree on— aah, who am I kidding, they just don't have those in Paris anymore."

* * *

"Wonder why she cut me off. Well, I'll see soon en—"

Stacy stopped walking down the hallway when she heard awfully pleased moans coming from Candace's doorway.

"Ooh boy, what's she doing this time…"

She went to open the door, but her eyes narrowed when the doorknob didn't budge.

"Now why would she lock the door?"

After a couple of minutes searching in deep thoughts, her eyes went wide when she finally came to the conclusion, just in time as those moans grew louder.

She didn't bother to be gentle when she banged her knuckles on the door.

"Candace! Candace! I thought we made a promise about those! CANDACE!"

A big growl was heard behind the door. "Who's there!?"

"It's me, Stacy! What the heck's going on?"

"Stacy?" Candace asked, voice much calmer. "Oops. Sorry for the yelling! Hold on, I'll open the door!"

With several clacks, Candace opened the door, and almost greeted her friend.

Almost.

Out of nowhere, Stacy screamed a piercing wail to her face, which made the redhead scream by reflex as well..

"Oh goodness! Candace, what is going on with you? You look like a walking children's connect-the-dots book!"

"Wait, let's talk about you first! Like, what's with the suit? And the black glass mask?"

Indeed, Stacy herself was wearing a full quarantine suit, complte with opaque face mask, which exaggerated her breathing sounds to a non-fashionable level.

"Oops. I forgot to turn the transparent lighting on, didn't I? Oopsies, my bad. Now, where did she say the button was again? Hold on."

She felt around the head parts of the suit, and found the switch after only sixteen minutes.

"Uh.. Okay, there we go, I think. Do I look better?"

"Well at least I can see your face," Candace said, sitting back down on the rug in front of her bed. "I think all points aside, you really nailed the look. My brothers came earlier with the exact same suit, and I think you're even creepier than them."

"Really? Wow, thanks Candace! I think I know what I'm gonna wear to Halloween two months from now!"

Silence.

"...If that's your attempt at a callback, then sorry to tell you, but you fell kinda short. No offense."

She sighed. "Yeah, don't worry, I know when I failed. Say, speaking about knowings, what's with the oohs and ahhs I heard back then?" She knocked her faceplate's temple with a finger. "Almost made me freak out!"

"Ah! That's just what I'm about to tell you..."

Candace picked up the small wooden box and showed the contents to Stacy.

"See? Isn't it _beautiful?_ "

Stacy let out a small gasp, but not in reverence.

"Uh... Candace? No offense, but all I'm seeing is just a pair of gloves."

Indeed, the supposedly glowing contents of the special box was a plain, old-looking blue-colored pair of gloves, with some glittering powder put in to reflect the sunlight for dramatic special effects.

"Oh, but it's a special kind of glove. _I_ made this thing 3 years ago when a beam from the sky literally made my skin feel like crawling!"

Stacy scoffed. " _That_ I remember. Brrr, that must've not felt good."

"I know! Just these gloves alone made me feel a lot better, and _I_ made them myself!"

Candace snapped the gloves on her hands and stretched her fingers. "Check this out. You put the three bowls on a rug so it won't spoil the room..."

* * *

"We have Greek Fire, vials containing blood from a 13th century Templar Knight, and a rare diamond taken from Mount Kilimanjaro. Those things I can understand. But why would this thing make any sense to put in a medicine?"

"You wanna know what else makes no sense? Building a working teleportation device in 2 hours, then forgetting to remind your guy that it was relocated."

"I already said I was sorry!"

Baljeet and Buford were inside a tower, surrounded with gears large and small, looking up to the massive bell hanging above them. "So, do you want to go take the shot, Buford?"

"Well, no sense in procrastinating. I'm doin' it."

As Buford marched up to the rope, Baljeet scratched his head as a thought came up to him.

"Hold on one second. There is an opportunity for a not-so-disrespectful reference here... But I forgot what that reference is."

"Oh! You mean this thing?"

He lifted up three drawings from the floor; one very rudimentary sketch of a stick figure with long hair, a very much detailed drawing of a woman, and a drawing of a goat.

"Yes, that is it!"

"And when I tug on this rope, I'm supposed to sing like, _and as I ring these bells tonight..._ "

 _"I swear it must be heaven's liight!"_

The two boys laughed at the like similarity, before cutting off a small piece of the rope.

"And this is the rope that rings the bells of the people. C'mon, let's go tell the guys!"

Even when they went down the stairs, the laughter has not fully stopped.

"That was a lot of trouble to go through for a short reference!"

"You betcha," Buford added, seemingly resisting the pull to put the rope in his mouth. "Hey, who's betting the old judge is coming in here right now?"

"Hahaha! What is he going to do, burn us if we will not be his eternal servants?"

"Ha-ha! Yeah! Heh, This probably ain't no Notre Dame, but we're in the same town, right?"

"Buford, we are in Lisbon, Portugal, not Paris, France."

"Yeah, that's what I said."

"But you were..." Baljeet sighed and shook his head. "Ugh, you know what, I am not going to waste my breath. Say, do you hear the bells ringing? It does not sound right for a bell that size."

"Is that another reference?"

"No, I meant that literally. You rang the bell, right?"

'What? No I didn't. I tugged, but I'm not even using a fraction of my strength! Even if it is ringing, it shouldn't have been ringing this long."

"So where is that ringing coming from?"

Silence hung as the two looked at each other.

"Buford... How much thought did you put in during that reference?"

"Uh... How much was I supposed to?"

 _Confiteor Deo, Omnipotenti..._

The two boys' spine shivered when they heard the incorporeal chanting echo throughout the halls.

"Crud. He _is_ coming! Come on, we gotta move! GogogoGO!"

Their screams filled the bell tower as they rushed back to the teleporter.

* * *

"And then you're supposed to incinerate the ice cube down the tube, but I don't have the time, so I just took some warmed ice water from the fridge. You dip it in here, and voila!"

The gloves on Candace's fingers glowed bright green as she finished the process. "And that's it! The soapwater's already slicked them up, and as result, you've got..."

Candace sighed as she caressed her shoulders and legs. "Oohhh... Pu-u-ure bliss."

"Hum. Actually, beside the itchy skin thing, the gloves look like fun! Can I borrow those some time?"

"Sure! As long as you sanitize it first."

The two were interrupted by the beeping on Candace's phone. But the ringtone was different; before Stacy opened her mouth to ask about this, Candace already leapt across the room to pick it up.

"That's the wanted social media alert!"

Stacy raised an eyebrow. "Wanted social media alert?"

"It activates when someone tags another person on my most wanted list in a photo!"

"...you have a most wanted list on your chatboard?"

"You turned up the find post of 'mutual friend' friends feature times seven," she added without turning her head. "You literally see comments from people seven friends away."

"...point."

"Now let me see..."

She gasped when she found the right post.

"What?" Stacy flipped to her side. "What is it?"

"Proof," she answered simply. "Glorious PROOF!"

"Proof about wh-oh." Stacy squinted at the photo, as if she didn't believe it was real. "Boy, even I can't argue with that kinda evidence. That is _real._ "

The photo was sent from Isabella, photographing herself with Phineas and Ferb in wide-brimmed hats and pickaxes. A giant sign saying 'Mount Kilimanjaro Diamond Base' could be seen behind them.

"Ooh, I've got them this time! They're mine!"

Stacy snagged Candace's arm just before she stormed out the door.

"Whoa whoa whoa! Where do you think you're going?"

"To the medicine store to bust my brothers! Now lemme go!"

"Oh, not when you're looking like that, you won't!"

Stacy grabbed Candace's shoulders, and pushed her back to her bed. "Do you wanna end up on the Most Non-Ill Ill Person of the Month?"

She held up a display of an e-magazine on her phone, with a large sentence exactly saying that on the cover. "You'll end up being the laughingstock of the city for an entire year if you're lucky!"

Candace gaped, trying to come up with a coherent answer, but failed and made up with shaking her two fists instead.

"Grr! You're right… But I need to go now! This kind of opportunity doesn't come twice!"

"Yep. And that's why I took some precautions."

She produced a second rubber suit out of her back pocket and handed it to Candace. "I know that even the Earth itself blowing up won't stop you a bit from busting your brothers, so I thought what the heck, why not make it go a bit faster."

"Whoa…" She took the suit from Stacy with furrowed eyes." How did you fit this into your pocket?"

"Don't ask me. It's a family thing. Apparently."

"Well what are we waiting for? Let's go!"

The moment they got out of the room however, Candace turned her head to see Stacy falling behind.

"Uh, Stacy? What are you doing?"

"What? I'm not gonna go out looking like _that._ "

Stacy picked up her removed suit from the ground and stored it inside her pocket.

"Alright, now we're good. Come on, let's go."

Candace pointed a vague finger to Stacy, but stayed silent as she walked past her down the stairs.

"Come on, you coming or not?"

Silence.

"…I'm right behind you."

* * *

 _A few minutes later…_

"You know, Candace, you never fail to blow me away. You came in with a clown suit, a balloon suit, a mom suit, but this one tops them all. Hold this, please." Linda handed the sealed product to Candace. "Oh, you do realize that Halloween's not coming until two months from now, right?"

"Joke with the callback all you want mom, but this time I got proof!

"And again, you come all the way looking like that just for a fantasy dream. Shouldn't you be in bed right now?"

Mom, I know I've said this a thousand times, but this time I got 'em. Heck, I'll even swear I'll be in bed all day if you want me to, just take a look at this!"

"Oh, alright," she answered with a roll of her eyes. "Show me the 'evidence-uh.' "

Candace did as she was told, and giggled when she heard a surprised gasp from her.

"Candace!… i-is that the…"

"Uh-huh, uh-huh. Yeah, that is our Phineas and Ferb. They teleported themselves to Mount Kilimanjaro to get some diamonds!"

"Let me see that!" Linda took the phone to take a closer look. "Oh my…"

"So, what does this mean to them?" she asked, twitching with sheer happiness. "They're grounded all year? Take away their privileges on running gags? What's it gonna be?"

"He-heh, Candace, you should've told me about this!" Linda said with a hearty laugh. "This brings back so many memories!"

"W-wait, what?"

"Oh, sorry, I guess you can't remember that time you took that photo. You were 6, and cute as a button back then! Even the photographer laughed when he saw you reach for the skies!"

"W- _what?"_

"You took a photo for your schoolboards, then insisted that you take one just for yourself. Here, I still kept the photo in my wallet. Take a look!"

Linda slipped a photo out of her wallet's pocket and showed it to the two girls.

"Wooow…" Stacy cut in, mesmerized. "You were so cu-u-ute!"

Indeed, the photo showed quite the adorable, large-eyed Candace, beaming to the camera with a pickaxe in hand and a large hat on her head.

"But does anyone else feel a bit creeped out that the photo taken _eleven_ _years ago_ has the exact same background with _today's_ Mount Kilimanjaro?" Stacy pointed out. "Is the studio owner a clairvoyant or something?"

"Heh. Maybe that background sells really well with other kids," Linda replied. "Well you swore, Candace. If I listen to you, you'll go back to bed. Rest well, okay?"

"Yes, mom," she said, slumping over with a weary sigh. "Come on, Stacy, let's go."

"Oh, I'll be right behind ya," she replied. "Just as soon as I can cut a deal for that priceless photo of you."

* * *

"Bewitched bell rope, ancient blood vials, natural-cut diamond, Greek fire, and 1500 very ordinary nails. That's everything!"

Phineas took each of the material and put it in the wallside hatch. He closed the hatch and pushed the red button beside the lid.

"That should synthesize it on the ride home. Set the course, Ferb!"

Ferb typed in the coordinates to their backyard, and with a flash of light, the teleporter disappeared from the Siberian forest.

* * *

Back at the DEI tower, Doofenshmirtz was busy testing the Inator by taking random shots on the unfortunate citizens down below. Record hits included someone who turned into a bobblehead because he tripped on a sidewalk, someone who got eaten by the blanket that he bought just minutes ago, someone who got an electrical equipment set falling from the sky just in time to save him from his wife's nagging, and a small turkey takeout bag held by a person turning into a large turkey sandwich.

"Man, this thing gets weirder and weirder by every shot! I mean, can you believe one twin grew hair all over, while the other lost all of his body hair? This Inator is just plain crazy!"

"Indeed. As they say, a weapon unaimed is better than a weapon failed."

"Hey look, you _can_ say something that's not made-up gobbledygook. That's what Uncle Terry would've said! And I would say, who we gonna test this baby on next?"

But behind them, Perry quietly cut off the wires trapping him with a laser emitter. Within minutes, he cut a clean streak through the wires, and stretched out his body to disperse the rest.

"Well well well, Perry the Platypus escapes again!" Doofenshmirtz laughed. "Looks like he needs another shot!"

He spun around the Inator with a flick of his palm and aimed it at the agent. But this time, Perry came prepared; when Doofenshmirtz fired the beam, he took out a compact powder box and opened the small mirror inside, reflecting the ray back to the scientist.

With widened eyes, Doofenshmirtz tried to evade before the ray can hit him, but his foot tripped again on the Inator's power cables.

Growling, he muttered to himself, "Note for self; find a backstory involving wires so I can have an excuse for my impending revenge."

With nothing else to try, Doofenshmirtz covered his head under his arms as the beam struck both him and the Inator.

"Oh boy… Okay Doofenshmirtz, stay calm, stay calm, stay calm, nothing's gonna happen to you if you think good thoughts…!"

On Doofenshmirtz, the blast did not have an apparent effect, or at least not yet; the Inator, on the other hand, began to fire on all directions at random, blasting people and buildings with wild abandon.

"Oh come on, the willy-nilly sthick again?" He rolled his eyes in contempt. "That is _**so**_ overused!"

Just as soon as his eyes returned from their roll, he saw a remote floating away from his pocket with a bright green glow. Seeing this, the doctor panicked and stretched his arms all around, trying to catch the floating remote.

"Oh no. No, I've kept that for safekeeping! No no don't! That-"

But the magic glow alrady shaped itself into a finger and pushed the big red button; at once, the Inator exploded with a big kaboom.

"...was the self destruct button."

He slumped back down to the ground, grumbling as he went.

"Well that's the power of words for ya. Eight small words of fourth-wall acknowledging can crush you harder than an annoying platypus. Oh, and speaking of annoying platypuses..."

He pointed a frown at the platypus, who parachuted off the balcony with a conspicuously large logo of his face on it.

 _"Curse you, Perry the Platypus!"_

* * *

"And then she totally said 'pen me!' How was I supposed to know she didn't mean writing on a piece of paper!?"

Candace was lying on her bed with crossed fingers on her stomach, letting her motions out while Stacy wrote down her notes on a clipboard, all while wearing mock glasses and trying to keep both it and her notes from slipping off, on account of the girl's anti-germ gels.

"Uh-huh. Just let it out, Candace. Sick days are a lot of emotions rolled up in a ball. Go nuts."

But before she got the chance to, they were interrupted by a flash of light from the window.

"Hey… do you see that..?"

The two looked up through the window to the backyard where the noises came from. Green lights blinked through three times, before a teleporter appeared at the backyard's center with a powerful flash of light.

"Huh. Well, that was a _flashy_ entrance."

Candace just gave Stacy a deeply unapproving look, dashed with a gentle shaking of her head.

"What? Somebody's gotta say it."

After rolling her eyes, Candace shook her fists downward. "Ooh boy, that's gotta be Phineas and Ferb! They're going down this time for sure!"

"Hmm. What do you think they're up to?"

They turned their heads as they heard a knock on the door.

"Candace, open up! We have a surprise for you!"

Candace didn't even try to suppress another frustrated groan. "Ooh boy. I'm just plain _thrilled_ to know what it is, Phineas. Let me recover from my fall first, because I've been standing so far up the edge on my seat, I fell down to the floor!"

"Oof. That's some sharp sarcasm you're selling there," Stacy commented.

"I know, right?" She shrugged her shoulders. "Itchiness makes you grumpy. Grumpiness makes you sarcastic."

She hobbled her way up and opened the door with a weak flick of her wrist, letting the kids go in.

"Candace, I know that mom told us to let you rest the day off, but I promise you, you'll love this surprise," Phineas started with excitement.

"I already told you, I— "

"It's the cure to your chickenpox!"

"—won't be seduced by your coolness, no matter- wait, what?"

"Yeah! Made from materials all around the world. Guaranteed to cure you in earnest!"

Silence.

"…You know, with everything else that's happened this summer, why do I still think that _trusting_ your word is the most _senseful_ course of action?"

"I know it looks a bit mundane, but just give it a try, sis. Trust us, it'll make you feel better."

She hesitantly took the chocolate-colored serum, gazing at the little gleams of light on its side as she twirled it around in doubt.

"I dunno, Candace," Stacy peeked from behind the shoulder. "Your brothers have never been wrong about something before…"

After another long stint of silence, she winced.

"…well, anything that you guys made will probably be better than two weeks of burning itchiness, I suppose," she stuttered, as if she was mincing her mouth with every sentence. "But for the record, anything happens to me, I know who to blame."

She took several short breaths to brace herself. "Here goes nothing…"

But just before she could taste the sweet-smelling liquid, she felt something else hitting her back; namely, a stray beam of the misfired Placeholders-Inator.

"Hold on one sec," she said, furrowing her eyes and handing the glass back to Phineas. "I just felt something cold splashing my back. What is it?"

But before anyone could answer the question, Candace's sickly red dots began to disappear, popping back beneath her skin one by one.

"Whoa! This stuff works fast!" Candace waved her limbs around, seeing her once-again clean skin. "I haven't even touched one sip, and I'm already cured!"

"Wait, you haven't even got a sip?" Phineas raised an eyebrow at her sister, then turned to Ferb. "Ferb, did you add any accelerants to the serum?"

He shook his head.

"…Uh-oh."

"Uh-oh? What's uh-oh?"

"Well, uh, we made the cure serum to be only effective once you consume half the recommended dosage, to prevent any misdiagnosis. It won't do a thing if you only drank a quarter a glass, let alone a single sip."

"Wait. So… if your little cure didn't work… then what's curing me?"

Candace blinked rapidly before feeling a sudden urge to rub her eyeballs. She held a palm against her temple, limping her way back to the bed.

"Whoa… Why am I feeling woozy all of a sudden?"

She then felt a burning tickle on her throat. In affectation, she suddenly burst into a volley of none-too-friendly coughs.

In between those nasty coughs, she gasped as her mind drew a conclusion.

"Wait a minute! Coughing, blinking, and then… I know what this is!"

She rubbed her wrist on the lower edges of her nose. "Stacy! Go get the box on the basement! Marked CP!"

"CP? The Col—"

"Yes! Go! Before it's too late!"

"Outta the way, people! Ooh, gotta hurry before cargo hits the blanket!"

As Stacy hurriedly sprinted out of the door, Candace turned around to face the window, this time outright closing her nostrils with her fingers, trying to suppress her creeping coughs all the while.

"Candace?" Phineas raised a hand. "What does CP stand for?"

"Oh, Phineas..." She turned back to the bed, a hand still clutching the side of her head and one seemingly trying to keep her nose together. "I'd be all over you if my head's not spinning like a rollerblade right now! CP, CP... Hold on, sometimes I forget the codings..."

Her eyes abruptly turned wide. "Oop, _too late!"_

The kids turned away and squinted, putting a hand above their eyes to block the sight of Candace blowing a great big snort into her blanket.

"Coming through!" Stacy skidded into the doorway with a plastic box in hand. But when she saw Candace lying and shivering on her bed, she only sighed.

"...oops. I'm too late, aren't I?"

"Yes... yes you are."

"Hoo boy. Good thing this box included tissues. And industrial grade sanitizers..."

Stacy began to sort through the box to find her the tissue bag. When she finally found it after a twenty-minute gap however, the kids all heard someone calling on the door.

They all turned around to see Linda standing with a frown on the doorframe.

"Kids! What did I tell you about coming inside Candace's room?"

"Oh, don't worry about that, mom," Phineas cheerily answered. "Candace's been cured!"

"What?"

"Yeah, we were just as surprised as you are. But really, her red dots are all gone. She's clean!" He added a small hesitant pause. "...well, uh, actually not so much."

Linda stepped inside the room and walked to the bed, where Candace was lying down with a box of tissue in hand.

"Oh, hi _*cough*_ there mom. What's up?"

"Candace? Are you..."

"Yep. Somehow I got rid of the itchy dots. Except that I traded it with green mucus and tickled throats... Apparently."

"Oh Candace. How on earth did you catch a cold twice in six weeks? "

"Heh. If I knew, the boys would've been busted by now."

"Well, thank goodness I've bought that extra pack in the colds department. Oh, and I was planning to cook up something different for today..." She rubbed her chin in thought. "What do you say to a nice plate of chicken soup, Candace?"

"...That _*cough*_ … would be nice, mom."

"Well, it's settled then. Rest up, dear, it'll be ready in a minute. Kids, you can help me if you'd like."

With nods and all sorts of affirming vocal gestures, the kids followed her to the kitchen.

"Oh, hold on a sec mom!" Phineas called. "We forgot something for Candace."

Phineas and Ferb turned around and rushed back inside their sister's room.

"Candace? You feeling okay?"

"Huh? Oh, it's you." She lazily turned her head on the pillow. "What is it? My head's feeling like a jazz party gone up to eleven, and I just took some medicine with pretty sleepy side effects, so you better hurry up. I may end up not listening to parts of your conversation."

"Well that's okay, we're not staying for long. We just want to give you something."

Phineas handed to her a warm glass of water. When she finally paid enough attention to actually see in high definition, she saw that it was not water on that glass at all.

"This is... the cure serum? But... it's useless now."

"True, it won't help with your current illness, but try it anyway. There's a surprise!"

After a small pause, Candace sighed.

"Well, I suppose things can't get any worse than me ill like this... What the heck."

Hesitantly, she took the glass to her mouth, and took one large gulp.

In an instant, her eyes widened with unheld surprise.

"Wait... It can't be! This is...!"

"Yep. We put in the flavor of your favorite drink; the Lactose-Free Mr. Niles Chocolate Milk. Mom said it was your go-to comfort drink when you were sick, from when you were 6, all the way up until-"

"Until they stopped selling it three years ago because they went bankrupt. Huh..."

She sighed, looking up at the ceiling.

"Memories, memories… This day's been jam-packed with them."

Bringing her head down low again, she chuckled.

"Well, some are better than others."

With a warm smile, she went down the entire glass in a minute.

She put down the glass back to the table, but not before giving her brothers an appreciative pat on their heads.

"Thanks guys. After all of today, you've really made this all almost worth it."

"You're welcome sis!" Say, you wouldn't object to a larger pack of the milk, would you?"

"Heh. Would I?"

"Perfect! Now, without the medicinal properties, we just need to create the flavoring powder. That will simplify the time and serum greatly! With everything on hand, we'll-"

"Phineas. Mind you that I have a huge headache right now?"

"Oops! My bad." He chuckled. "Don't worry. We'll have it beside the tray to your chicken soup. We'll be back in a bit, sis!"

The brothers strolled out the room, closing the door behind them. Candace laid back on her bed, looking past Stacy to the window.

"Hm. You know Stace, it occured to me, that for once, my brothers actually have a good intention in mind when they invent things."

She only scoffed. "Really now?"

"Yeah. You know that when I think about it, they were just trying to cure me with all they've got... and when it didn't work, they settled on giving me my favorite drink in the universe... Huh."

Stacy folded her arms. "Wait for it..."

"Say, how long do you think they're going to make that serum? 15, 20 minutes?"

"We're getting there..."

"And how exactly do they get a discontinued brand of milk?" Her face began to wrinkle in fear. "Did they take it from, say, outside of Danville?"

Stacy stretched a pointing finger to the sky. "In three... Two..."

"Outside o-of America? Outside... of EARTH?"

"And... Here we go."

"Stacy! You gotta help me!" She shook her friend by her shoulders with a bit too much force. "You gotta bust the boys for me again! Please!"

"O-o-okay! Just. Stop. Shaking me!" She grabbed Candace's arms and downed them back to the bed.

"So you'll do it for me?"

"...ugh." Stacy slapped a palm to her forehead. "My heart was this close to hoping that you'll find some conscience in your soul, but my brain was just asking for when you'll dump it into the seven seas."

Silence.

"So you'll do it?"

She gave her eyes a small roll. "Just tell me where to start."

* * *

 _ **So what do you think? Not one of my best, but I'm hoping for some upsides.  
**_

 _ **And now, a trailer for the next chapter, which (hopefully) will be up on July 8th.**_

 _ **Trouble tightens around the 2nd Dimension as Doofenshmirtz readies to retake Danville for the 15.069th time, this time assembling an army of fellow mad scientists for the deed. Meanwhile, after 3 months of re-renovating their newly acquired penthouse, the Resistance encounters a secret hidden on the face of its figures...  
**_


	3. Armies and Allegations

**_Not much to say on this one. Only thing of value would be to tell you to spot the references I've planted, and try to guess what song this chapter's musical number based on._**

 ** _Enjoy the story!_**

* * *

It was early in the morning, and one could still feel the cool breeze of sunrise time blowing gently on their skin. None of this mattered to the girls, though; they were busy out hunting.

"Give me the numbers, Gretchen."

"67 percent, ma'am. I'd say a hundred, but we never actually did this kinda thing, so I got nothing to compare it to."

Isabella, Gretchen, and the rest of the Firestorm Girls were all hidden on separate bushes on the center of the New Danville Park, sights set upon a tree at the middle of them. Their eyes locked on to their target, comfortably perched under the shade on the tree.

"Time?"

"0700. We're ready."

"Perfect."

She squinted at the running bird that kept them up for two hours.

"We've waited long enough for this. Alright then, take aim... Fire!"

Hearing her signal, Katie pulled the trigger, knocking out the target cold from its spot on the tree, from which it fell with a small thump to the ground.

"Heh. Only something that small can make falling from that height pretty cute," Holly said.

While it was still wriggling around, smokes rose up faintly from it as the girls ran to check their success.

"Wait, smokes? Is that supposed to happen?"

Raising an eyebrow, Isabella took the small yellow canary on her hands, but winced as she almost dropped the bird, and would've too if not for her gloves.

"Ow, it's hot as a burnt cookie! Katie, how much shock did you put on that tazer?!"

"I don't know!" Katie turned the knob on the side of the gun all around with a dumbfounded look. "This is the first time I used a non-lethal weapon in years!"

"Ooh boy," Adyson chanted behind her. "Katie just made out the poor parrot! Katie just made out a poor parrot!"

"Shut up, Adyson! You're making me feel even worse!"

"Who says it's a parrot, anyhow?" Gretchen cut in. "It's a canary. Parrots are red. And they talk."

"Heh. I can already think of some words it'll use for Katie! One of them starts with a B."

"Pfft. In this case I agree with her," Isabella stood up, cradling the small canary on her palm. " 'Barf' would be a very appropriate word for you."

"Believe me, I'm already feeling like barfing right now, boss," Katie answered, putting a palm on her chest.

"So what do we do now, Isabella?" Gretchen asked, pointing at the X marks on where the bird's eyes were supposed to be.

She sighed. "...We'll bring it in to Dr. Baljeet. They didn't call these things 'non-lethal' for nothing. Maybe he can bring it back from not-dead death."

"And if he doesn't?"

"We'll just find another animal for the decor piece on the apartment's backyard," she responded dryly, leveling a cold glare at the blonde girl. "Preferably one that's not _deep-fried._ "

"Oop, now you've pushed me past the...!"

Katie rushed off to the rear of a tree, desperately clutching her hand onto her lips.

"Yeah... Looks like that cake already creeped into some more than others."

* * *

"Do you guys ever _listen to me?!"_

She grabbed and shook the boys' cheeks, forcing a grim grin on them. "I said, _I_ get first dibs on the penthouse's course today, darn it!"

"O-ok-kay, C-Can-dace, we're so-orr-y!"

With a chuckle, she let her brothers go, but not before giving them a ruffle on their heads.

"Gee Candace, we've never seen you so cheery before," Phineas said, scratching his left ear. "That picnic last night must've gone really well, huh?"

"First, it's actually an official meeting, and it will be referred to as such. Second... Yes, yes it did. So well, in fact, I ordered the Firestorm Girls to get the crown jewel of that meeting."

"Nope, there'll be no parrots today, Candace," Isabella interrupted behind her. "Well, at least not a living one."

"What the..." She ran to the girls and knelt to check the bird inside the cage. "What happened?"

"Ask 600-volt-girl over here. Knocked it out cold, but it doesn't look like it'll come back anytime soon. Or probably at all."

"You put 600 volts in a bird!? This is a _**bird**_ , not a marathoner!"

Katie groaned. "Well, did anyone ever tell me how much the correct voltage is?"

Silence.

"...huh…" Candace pointed a vague finger at her. "She's... Yeah, that's a good point."

She handed back the caged bird to Isabella. "Bring it to Baljeet. Who knows, maybe we can get lucky and have a flying va-. Ugh, I mean bird…"

"Yep, already on it, boss. See ya."

As the girls went on the hallway, Candace slapped a palm on her head. "Dang it! Now what am I supposed to use tomorrow morning?"

"Candace, what's the bird for, anyway?"

She sighed. "Nothing. Not even a good reason; I just want a real bird to go with the hedges."

She pointed down to the hedges many floors down, which were cut in the shape of twice-sized figures of all twelve members of the Resistance, complete with name tags below them.

"Yeah, I guess the garden does need a bird to go along with the greeneries," Phineas said, looking down the huge window. "But Candace shouldn't we focus on more, uh… I don't know... practical pursuits?"

"What do you mean?"

"Candace, we got this penthouse from Charlene three months ago, but we found this course just last month. I mean, what if she hid something more than just a massive obstacle course behind these walls?"

"Fair point. But, superfluous. The OWCA agents sweeped the building twice after we found this obstacle course. They found nothing."

"Well, that's good news, I suppose… Hey, speaking of OWCA agents, where's Perry?"

"He's out. And I'm gonna run before you start giving me the puppy dog face and asking about more," she said sarcastically, pointing to each of their noses. "I'm late for a… reunion… party."

"Party?"

"Oop, I mean funeral! Stupid missed etymologies…" She grabbed the black cape from the drawers and wrapped it around herself. "It's for a… friend… of mine."

There was a twinge of silence as she looked away, almost as if something weighed too much on her mind, even to tell her brothers what it is. After what seems to be the longest five seconds of the day however, she shook her head to clear the thoughts.

"Oh. For once, don't _follow_ me. Please _._ "

* * *

"Good morning Agent P," Major Monogram greeted Perry. "What do you think of the old bughouse? Three months of repairment, and we're really rolling out the futuristics!"

He threw out his arms in the sky, showing the many, many cyborg agents working on the many holes, decays and destruction on the base, each with nothing more than the tools that were welded in place of their organic arms.

"Everybody's hard at work, and you know that we've been assigning you on some of the harder rooms to clean. But not for today, though. We have some other business set for you…"

They walked past the only operational automatic doors on the base leading to the Major's office. Although the room had some cheap knockoffs that tried to resemble plastic furniture, Perry was certain that none of those would support his metal bulk.

"Alright then Agent P, here's your mission. You know that Doofenshmirtz and his family escaped us three months ago, providing us with a second, much fancier base of operations. Frankly, I wanted to move out there, but then I have to pack the furniture, and the monitor, and pay ridiculously large transfer fees, not to mention finding a truck large enough to fit all of the stuff we're gonna have to move… you get it, it's easier just to repair the base."

Perry simply lowered his eyelid in response.

"Now, you also know that purple and grey colors become a very big no-no around town, what with those two being the former dictator's favorite colors. And just by coincidence, we found these conveniently placed, conveniently purple-and-grey painted warehouses popping up around Danville just two weeks ago.

The monitor displayed the aforementioned warehouse, on a quiet hill overlooking downtown Danville. "We know you've wanted to lay a good dose of revenge to him, and now we are giving you the chance. Good luck, Agent P!"

With a sharp salute, the agent rocketed off the launch hatch on the ceiling.

"Oh, and for you Carl." He took out a white envelope and gave it to the intern. "Your paycheck for the month."

"Yes! Thank you sir!" The intern did a cheer on his chair. "Now I can see that spaghetti place they've been going on so much! Wahoo!"

* * *

"And that, Buford, in a very minute detail, is the story from the play of William Shakespeare. All I am missing is the title…"

"Wow! The bad cop jumps off the bridge because the criminal he's chasing all these years saved his life, and then that criminal's daughter got sent off to the only surviving member of the movement…" Buford clapped his hands in excitement. "This is the best story _ever!_ "

"Yes, yes. Now, may I have my 200 dollars fee, please?"

"Oh, alright. Here you go."

Baljeet chuckled as he waved the stack of paper given to him. "Easy money indeed… Oh, we appear to have guests."

The doors slid open, where the Firestorm Girls stepped inside the room, followed closely by Phineas and Ferb behind them.

"…ister's a changed girl, but she'll never lose that overprotective edge, no matter what happens!"

"Hmm. I don't know whether to be glad or afraid…"

She chuckled, patting him on the shoulder. "Be afraid, kid. Be afraid."

Isabella turned back to the young doctor. "Hey doc, we need your help."

"Ask, and it shall be given to you. What do you need?"

"Revival and awakening... Or burial processes," she said with a slight pause. "We don't really know. Check this thing out."

She passed the cage to him. The boy squinted with wonder to the subject lying unconscious inside it.

"This is a quite a beautiful bird. What happened?"

"600 volts administered with a taser gun. We think it's alive, but only because the gun's included in the non-lethal weapons bracket."

"600 volts!?" He suddenly yelled out. "This is a bird, not a marathoner!"

"Ha! That's what she said."

Everyone turned their heads with raised eyebrows at Buford's non sequitur.

Baljeet rolled his eyes and groaned. "Ugh. No, Buford, timing and context is still not right. And I already said you cannot use it without a clever spin! What kind of rating do you think we are using right now?"

"Huh. Good point."

"And do check the meaning of 'too soon' in the calendar," he said with annoyance. "So, continuing with our feathered friend here… I have never got the chance to treat avians often. Where do I begin…"

"Pfft. This is simple!" Buford grabbed a baton from his back pocket. "I've got a foolproof way of waking up people, no matter how deep under they are. If he ain't wakin' up after this, then he ain't wakin' up at all."

"Really? Hm. I expect your method to be highly unscientific."

"Yes, indeed. This certainly won't fly up your alley, but then again most of the practical world don't either. But hey! This teaching thing might go mutual after all."

He took the cage and lay it on the ground, but still kept a hard grip on the handle. "Alright then, step back and watch the miracle happen! …Oh, and cover your ears."

Everyone did… except Phineas.

"…Wait, is that part of the supposed clichéd line or is that—"

Without waiting, Buford swung the baton and beat down the cage with too much force to bear, causing ear-splitting clangs to bang all across the room. On the sixth hit, the bird jolted awake and flew at lightning speed, crashing its head on the bars of its newfound cage a dozen times before stopping to feel the concussion dawning on.

"There we go. Awake and living. Now _you_ owe me 200 bucks."

"Heh. I'll forward the tab to Candace," Isabella said with a roll of her eyes. "Alright girls, let's put this in the hedge. I can't wait to see it already!"

She paused, looking down on Phineas' still twitching form.

"Oh, and someone get some cotton for him."

With that, the seven girls went out of the room, all conversing amongst themselves. Ferb helped Phineas up, who was still a bit woozy from the shock.

"So, uh, guys, what are you doing over here?"

"Well, Buford and I were searching for stories to help us with our backward mindsets," Baljeet replied, swiveling his chair back to the monitor. "To let us know what the rest of the world is thinking."

"And apparently, we missed a lot!" Buford pointed to the screen. "Did you know that in one show, some girl sculpted her face onto Mars, then went and fought in a giant treehouse robot the next day after? This is just pure gold!"

"Really? That sounds like a blast!"

"Yep. Here, I saved a song from another show. I plan to make a playlist, with stoneworks! Hah! That'll be even more glorious!"

He slid a disk down to the side of the monitor, and the faint sounds of music began to play through.

* * *

Perry landed on the grassfields of the hill overlooking the city, in front of the large purple and gray warehouse that was his target. He raised his eyebrow; not because there was a rustling in the bushes, or that there was a flash of black on the corner of his eye.

No, it was the gigantic label hung above the entrance, saying 'Doofenshmirtz Evil Hidden Warehouse'.

" _Not even trying"_ was the first thought to collide with his brain.

But still, to ensure himself that there was nothing suspicious, he scanned the area with every vision modes known; x-ray, thermal, imaging, electronical, and approximately 200 others that cannot be pronounced by name.

Each and every one returned no results, in no small part because of the warehouse is impenetrable to every view. Having no options left, Perry braced himself as he opened the large doors.

The warehouse was completely blank, and frankly dusty. It was almost completely devoid of materials that were supposed to be the norm of the warehouses. Perry went in for a closer look, nerves as tense as a runny back.

It only took twelve footsteps before he triggered an infrared beam.

Before he could deal with the shock of the horribly loud alarm, he saw that the warehouse's walls began to slide down to the ground, Replacing it was the familiarly compact interior of a Doofenshmirtz Emergency Escape Pod, encircling around him as if almost to crush him flat. He tried to fly away, but a sensor picked this up, and a chain wrapped itself around his leg to prevent him escaping.

But as much as Perry thought that he was done for, the metal walls stopped one step short from crushing him. Instead, he can feel the ground rumbling on his feet. From underground, out came the metal floor, sealing him completely inside the escape pod.

But then he felt that rumbling again; it was launching fast.

Perry can only try to punch out a hole on the trap in vain as the pod began to lift off from the ground, as it took him away to the skies.

* * *

 _Tomorrow…  
Comee-ees! _

"Hahaha! Wahoo! That is a great tune!"

A gloved hand reached out to turn off the stereo. "Alright one-point-five, _now_ you can start the jingle. Sheesh."

"Thank you for the clearance, sir! Initiating jingle."

A metal click was heard, before the signature jingle began to play.

 _Doofenshmirtz Secret Underwater Evil Lair!_

The jingle also served to turn off the dramatic lighting, revealing in full view the form of former dictator Doofenshmirtz, and a brand new second man-bot standing behind him. The new robot has three distinct features on him; first, despite having the same head model with the safe mode of the other Normbots, his had no retraction feature; no second head. Second, he had an actual pair of legs instead of a hover model. Third, and the most distinguishing of all, his round-shaped body is painted in the model of a blue suit, with a red tie and a white shirt underneath.

"Alright, pack up the stage!" He clapped his hands, shooing away the curtains covering the stages. "We need to save the pyrotechnics for the real show. Which is in… ten minutes, if this new watch is to be believed," he said, squinting at the new, bright neon digital watch on his wrist. "Heck, it even has a stopwatch and a beeping feature! Where did you get this?"

"Nowhere, sir! I made it all on my own."

"Stop title-dropping songs, you piece of junk. I told Charlene she needed to tone up the References Overwatch thingamajig." He hunched his way to the viewing window, seeing nothing but blue but setting the perfect position for some evil sulking.

"Let me remind you, Normbot v1.5, you're only here until I can get Perry the Platyborg back to my side. Ah, I miss the guy already just by thinking about him. You know, all the executioning, torturing and brainwashing… It's just not the same without that small monotreme."

There was a long, _long_ pause of silence.

…

"…sir? Sir?"

"Ooh!" He shook his head harshly, moving his mind away from the flashbacks. "Ugh, I get _way_ caught up in flashback overruns sometimes. Don't mind that. Anyhoo, I do like people who try to slave themselves away to pieces in order to receive the approval of a higher being, and by that I mean me, despite being told that it's a useless effort… "

He pushed the button of a remote on his pocket, lighting up the projector screen in front of him.

"And credit where it's due, you did get me three ideas that are vital to my plan."

Flashes of a slide presentation began to form on the monitor, presenting a moving diagram of the evil doctor's plan.

"The Duplicatator-Inator, despite redundancies in naming, is spitting out 500 Normbots per minute! Now that's even more Normbots coming out than the arguments Charlene and I fought every weekend! How did you manage that?"

"Simple, sir. It was sitting around, smelling and being useless in your testing grounds. I simply gave it a renovation."

"And then there's the crowd… The crowd… Hey, how did you pick the right crowd for the job anyhow? I mean seriously, these people look like they _really_ know their stuff!"

"Simple strong networking, sir."

Silence.

"…that's it? That's how you found near three thousand evil scientists scattered all around the world and brought them _all_ in here?"

"Well sir, you did tell me once to let you do most of the talking. It's more efficient that way."

"Hm. Why yes, yes I did…."

He stepped down the stairs and read the monitors on the side of the room, displaying the stage's preparations. "Oh, and then there's also the thing with the song. Who knew the song that started _the_ messiest rebellion ever on my rule, can actually be twisted to fit my evil bidding?"

"It's only a matter of rewriting the lyrics, sir. The Resistance won't even know we stole one of their most symbolic song. That is, until we play it endlessly on their execution camps!"

Doofenshmirtz snorted; soon enough, he was laughing helplessly, clutching the railing on the side to support himself.

"Hahahaha! Until they're on their... Hahaha! Man, who knew you can crack a joke?"

"Yes indeed, sir. Who knew indeed."

"Hahaha… Oh, and hey, tell Peter the Panda to watch for incomings. Perry the Platyborg should fall for that warehouse trap by now."

"Roger that, sir! It will be done."

Doofenshmirtz glanced at his watch and balked. "Ooh, I'm on the air in three minutes! Wish me luck."

"Good luck, sir!" he cheerfully replied.

"I told you, watch your references, dang it!"

* * *

Doofenshmirtz went up to the balcony overlooking the hall to see a sea of people, each conversing or bickering at each other in a chaotic ensemble. Highlights included someone with a lobster hand for his left hand, someone whose head is encased in a water tank, a robot that speaks Spanish, and a thirty-foot tall giant talking with someone else who possessed way too prominent cheekbones, who had to ride a floating platform to speak with him.

Doofenshmirtz lightly tapped his finger on the mic.

"Testing, testing, one, two, _**SILEEENCEEEE!**_ "

The crowds' chatter immediately halted on account that they all were too busy ducking their heads and wincing, before stopping to give themselves auditory light scans from their glowing-pen like machines.

He silently muttered to himself, "Man, that trick never gets old."

After chuckling to himself, he then managed his opening lines.

"Alright then, evil scientists of the Tri-State Area, listen up! Now, you may wonder why is it that you suddenly found yourselves waking up in this underwater facility with no chance to escape…"

"Not exactly," the thirty-foot tall guy replied unenthusiastically. "We've kinda moved past the 'wondering' bit, and into the 'escape by any means necessary' bit."

"Huh, really? Did I l-"

"If you were the genius you seem to be, you'd have read the 'How to Kidnap Someone for Evil Scientists' manual, on the evil scientists version. It tells you _exactly_ how to treat evil scientists in a hostage situation. Did you know that point number one is 'don't actually kidnap an evil scientist'?"

"Okay, I g—"

"In fact, we were just about to settle who's gonna lead the impromptu flash mob before you showed up. It was a tie between me and the David dude, by the way."

"Alright, that's a real smart mouth you got there, you tall tower of disrespectfulness," he said with a pointed glare. "I suggest pointing that attitude to someone more worth it… as in, hmm, I don't know... the people that now protect the Tri-State Area from future despotic tyrannies!?"

Doofenshmirtz pointed to the wall behind him, projecting an image of the entire cyborg OWCA agency, with all the Resistance children standing behind them. At the sight, everyone in the audience gasped in horror.

"Yes! I know you've known who these people are. The biggest threat to all evil scientists, since August 5th 2011!"

At this, one scientist gasped in horror again. "He said the exact _premiere date_ of the Movie!"

"Darn it, Jonah!" Another one smacked that scientist on the head. "This is reality, not an El Matador de Amor behind-the-scenes screen! Act like it for once!"

"Nice ruining the moment over there, too. Better watch your heads, fella. You know that the good guys always go for the bumbling type," he said with a shake of his index finger. "Now, listen up! This is the part where you're supposed to pay attention. You all know that _none_ of us can stand a chance against those people. To use a rather clichéd analogy, they will crush each one of us like ants."

The scientists gasped again, with some even drawing back their hands to their mouth.

" _ **But!**_ That's only with the 'each one' bit attached. You take out that each one out of the sentence, and you'll be left with 'of us'! …Which just made the sentence confusing and gramatically incorrect, but the point stands!"

Normbot v1.5, who was standing behind the stage, controlled the projector screen, presenting a show of the misery of what-would-be-Danville's citizens after their takeover, all bowing with a terrified frown to a stick figure in a labcoat holding a handheld ray gun.

"If we band together our minds, our skills, our Inators! We can take _them_ out of the sentence for a change, and take the Tri-State Area _back into our folds!_ "

Some cheered at the spirit of his speech; but most still bore the look of unconvinced people.

"Aah, those are the eyes of doubt, I see," Doofenshmirtz said with a haughty smirk. "Well, now would be a good time for you to listen to my cues; you've listened, now get ready to _see!_ "

He pushed another button on the remote. The walls on the side of the hall opened up with loud cranks of turning gears and dramatic chanting, revealing behind them hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of the iconically menacing Normbots, rowed up tight almost as if they were shaping a black wall all by themselves.

"Did you really think I was stupid enough to take over the Tri-State Area without an army to a literal boot? Of course not, ingrates. Now see how our odds are stacked, people; thirty-something cyborg agents plus ten children, versus three thousand evil scientists and an infinite robot army. How does that sound?"

Seeing and hearing that there could be an actual shot at their lifelong dreams, all of the audience in that hall burst into the loudest cheer ever heard from any crowd in Danville.

"That's more like it. And as one last thing; as you know, per traditions of evil scientist groups of yore, there can be only one way of making an alliance group of evil scientists official. Come on, say it with me..."

All of the scientists raised their right hands and shouted, _**"A LARGE CROWD MUSICAL NUMBER!"**_

"And that's exactly what we're going to do. Hit it!"

Norm v1.5 saluted from behind the stage and turned around, popping a stick from under his arm to conduct the orchestra manned by the normal version Normbots.

 _Do you hear the scientist sing?  
Singing the song of evil men.  
It is the music of the scientists  
who will not stand for freedom!  
When the beating of your heart  
echoes the beating of the drums,  
There are tyrannies to start  
when tomorrow comes!_

 _Will you join in our crusade,  
who will be strong and stand with me?  
Beyond the underwater, are there subjects you long to rule?  
Then join in the fight,  
that'll give you the right to dictate!_

 _Do you hear the scientists sing?  
Singing the song of evil men!  
It is the music of the scientists  
who will not stand for freedom!  
When the beating of your heart  
Echoes the beating of the drums,  
There are tyrannies to start  
When tomorrow comes!_

 _Will you give all you can give,  
So that our banner will advance?  
Some will fall and some will live,  
Will you stand up and take your chance?  
The people will scream out in fear  
As we paint out their fence!_

 _Do you hear the scientists sing?  
Singing the song of evil men.  
It is the music of a scientist  
who will not stand for freedom!  
When the beating of your heart  
echoes the beating of the drums,  
There are tyrannies to start  
When tomorrow…  
Comeee-ees!_

* * *

"Cheers!"

Two glasses clinked together in the air, before the owners drank their contents in stride.

"So what's this thing called?" Candace asked, peering into her glass of punch. "The glass-hitting, I mean."

"Oh, that?" Jeremy said, filling back his glass. "From what I hear from people, it's called a… a toast."

"A… toast?"

"Yep. And don't ask what a pair of glass has to do with burnt bread. I have no clue either."

The two laughed again, warm as the summer sun shining above them.

"Hey, speaking of missed etymologies, why do they call it a funeral when there's nobody dead around? I can't even see a coffin!"

"On that, you'll have to ask a friend of a friend of mine. Who's also serving as the second-rate Vice Party Instigator."

"Huh. Well where can I find this friend of yours?"

As soon as she finished that sentence, she heard a small quiet cheer, followed by tap on her shoulder.

"Hiya the—"

The girl interrupting Candace never finished her sentence, probably because she's already lying on the ground from her reflex suplex.

"Oow! That was a lot of kicking butt for a nice greeting."

"Oh my gosh! I-I'm so sorry!" Candace nervously helped her up. "Uh, you know what they say, old habits die hard, and you did, uh…"

"It's okay. I should've probably known better than trying to take an expert like you by surprise…"

She picked herself up from the ground, sweeping away grass from her black rubber suit. "And you're one to talk about old habits die hard; look at me! It's been 6 months since the war's relegated to the OWCA guys, and I'm still using my Resistance outfit! Hehehe!"

Candace raised an eyebrow at how chipper the girl is, and at how fast she was talking.

"Uh, yeah. I'm C—"

"Yes I know, you're Candace Flynn- heck, I think the whole town knows you're Candace Flynn! But I've known you for a bit more, ma'am, and let me just say, that I really am…"

She suddenly stopped herself by taking a big gasp of air, muttering to herself to calm down.

"Sorry about that, I tend to get nervous when I'm near my idol figure. Or at least that's what the books say; that it's normal for people to get nervous near their idol figures, but what the heck do I know, right? Hehehe!"

She stopped again, this time growling to herself. "Start with introductions, start with introductions, darn it… okay."

She took another large gasp, before extending a stiff arm to Candace.

"Candace, I would like to introduce you to… myself? Wait, that's when you're introducing someone else… Eh, you get what I mean." She shrugged her shoulders.

"My name is Stacy Hirano, from Western Sector Division 4623—No,thenumbersdon'tcountanymoredarnit. Anyway, uh, it's a pleasure being here near you ma'am, and I'd like to say that it is nice knowing you."

"Uh-huh… pleasure to know you too," she said, shaking the girl's hand a bit cautiously. "And, uh, I think it says 'nice to meet you' in the 426 manual."

"Really? Well, what the heck. Point's driven."

"Say, can I ask you a question? Uh, I don't want to sound a bit judging, but…"

"You're asking me why I was a bit hyper around you. Don't worry, my sister taught me drills, ma'am," she waved her hand away. "Well, that's because I am _in awe_ with you! I don't know if there's a word for it, but you are my hero. My inspiration! I mean, can anyone name anyone else who can destroy that many Normbots in one minute? I don't think so!"

"Huh… so you're saying… that I actually managed to _inspire_ someone with my skills?"

"Heh. 'Inspired' might be just a _preety_ bit of an understatement, ma'am. Oh hey, do you mind if I get my camera? I gotta take a picture of this moment."

"Um… okay. Go ahead."

"Thank you! Be back in a minute. See you soon!"

As the girl with the blue bow ran to the front yard, Candace blew a short puff of air.

"Huh. Nobody's genuinely called me 'ma'am' for 6 months now. Actually, it felt kinda weird."

"Oh, be nice, Candace," Jeremy said. "You have a fan, a really nice one at that!"

"A fan? What's four rotors trapped in a cage got to do with an infatuated girl?"

He only chuckled in response.

"What? What's so funny?"

"Nothing… Just wondering how you can know the meaning of the word 'infatuated', but not the word 'fan'."

"…Hm. Yeah, that is pretty weird..."

* * *

"Back again. So Gretchen, how much does that cage weigh _now?_ "

"Hold on…" She took the cage and put it down on the digital scale. "Uh… 610 grams."

"Phew! thank goodness," Isabella said, breathing a sigh of relief. "I thought we need to go through that all over again because we missed two more grams. Alright girls, pack it up, we got a fancy backyard to visit."

As they put the scale back into the storehouse's shelf and went out the gate, Gretchen asked, "Why did we need to weigh the bird and the cage so many times, Isabella? And why did we chain it to its bar? I thought this was supposed to be just a décor piece."

"It is," she said back nonchalantly. "Or at least, that's what it's supposed to look like."

"Huh? What do you mean?"

She sighed again. "Looks like now is as good a time as any to tell you…"

She pulled out a piece of paper from her pocket, and showed it to the rest of the girls.

"What the… That's a...!"

"Yeah. A secret map to a secret room. It fell out of Candace's pocket when she ran past us to that party. It even came out with a mini mic. Why would she need that in a piece of paper? Anyway, that's not even the important part yet; check out the back piece of the paper."

She flipped the paper around, showing to the girls what can only be described as a jumbled mess of letters scratched and carelessly scrambled all around.

"Whoa! That's Candace's handwriting all right… but what the heck does it supposed to mean?"

"I visited Baljeet again back when I sent you girls to buy the weighted cage from the store. It says that Candace found the secret room last Monday, and she's been trying to find a way in ever since. She only found how to access the entrance just yesterday!"

"And I'm betting that way in would be a 610 gram object…" Adyson finished. "That's why you needed the parakeet in a cage weighing precisely 550 grams!"

"Exactly."

Isabella turned to the single hedge figure of four hummingbirds joining their beaks in the center of the formation. Growing from the adjoined beaks was a thick tendril of green vine, reaching exactly four feet downward.

She wrapped the vine to the handle on the top of the cage, and counted to three.

"One… two.."

Before she could finish, a large rumble was heard to her left as a section of the perfectly-trimmed grass slid out of place, revealing a hidden flight of stairs leading down to darkness.

"Alright then, ladies. Here we go…"

* * *

"Comfy, Perry the Platyborg? No, of course _you aren't!_ " Doofenshmirtz snapped, kicking nonexistent sand underneath his boot. "I made that trap to be as claustrophobic as possible. You'd be sweating right now if you can actually feel something beneath your metal skin! Not that you can do anything about that, anyway."

Doofenshmirtz bent down to meet his former general's eye through the pod's window. "So let's get things straight. I've attempted to take over the Tri-State Area a couple hundred times now. I've seen your fellow cyborg co-workers trying to thwart me, I see humans sometimes binging in on the mix… but I never really got a fix on _you_. What's up with that, hmm?"

Perry rolled his eyes; the doctor has got the nastiest dose of delusional nostalgia ever. He was present in every single engagement against Doofenshmirtz, and apparently he decided to forget all about that just to gloat...

"I've thought about that, and I've already prepared a solution in hand to fix your absenting problem. Behold!"

He pushed another remote from his pocket, which revealed a gigantic laser turret dropping down menacingly from the ceiling, aimed squarely at Perry's trap.

"The Re-Indoctrination-Inator! Heh, of course, you know how this thing works much better than most, since you've actually pulled this exact lever on your human and animal friends before… heheh, I just got nostalgic again. But, just to be perfectly clear in case that part of your brain _was fried too_ …"

He pointed to a tall section of mechanical CPU casings, bearing a large energy meter on it. "See, this thing takes up a lot of power in exchange for total and disquieting obedience. When the energy meter is fully charged, see that little meter over there? The Inator will blast a beam of pure pain and evil to you, making you fully loyal to me."

With an evil cackle, he pulled the lever attached next to the meter, charging up the Inator with a loud electrical beep.

"In 15 minutes, Perry the Platyborg! 15 minutes, and you will finally be my general yet again!"

He turned back to his subordinates. "Peter the Panda, get some Normbots and guard Perry the Platyborg until he's evil again."

The cyborg panda saluted and took off behind the stage, returning shortly with near three dozen Normbots primed for battle.

"Normbot v1.5, follow me. We need to examine our stocks. And by stocks, of course I mean armies. Come on!"

"Following you, sir!"

As soon as the doctor and the robot closed the door behind them, a sly smirk formed on Perry's bill. For all of his gloating, Doofenshmirtz still forgot far too many things.

Like the fact that all OWCA agents now have a standard-issue wrist GPS tracker/reinforcements caller.

Resisting the urge to let his smile grow too wide, he pressed the button on the side on his wristwatch.

And felt his smile fall like a rock when he saw the R-ETA timer set itself to 20 minutes.

"Isn't evil great?" one Normbot suddenly piped. "I already got 500 in salaries' count! And completely clean of muffin tops _and_ chassis oil!"

Slumping in defeat, Perry slapped a palm to his head. If there's one thing the Normbots can do competently while waiting…

* * *

"So, what do you girls think will be inside this thing?" Isabella began, moving her flashlight around and seeing nothing but the clean white walls around the stairs. "Armors? Weapons? Self-destruct systems?"

"Come on Isabella! It's six-ten grams! Six-ten!" Katie answered her, making wide hand gestures. "It's obviously a flesh-and-meat station!"

"Ugh. I hope not," Holly said. "If it's anything like the flesh I've read in that horror story a couple weeks back…"

The descending flight of stairs finally ended, landing the girls back on level ground.

"Well we're here… And no meats in sight," she said, narrowing her eyes. "But I do see-"

The girls winced when a sudden booming alarm blared all across the dark facility. Before they could react properly however, they froze when they found several hundred laser pointers pointing to every inch of their foreheads.

" _ **Warning. Heat signatures detected."**_

"Okay… this is a bad start to an introduction," Isabella started.

" _ **Security protocol. State the pass phrase in ten seconds, or prepare for immediate vaporization."**_

"And now we're going to be killed for our troubles," she dropped back. "…To be honest, I'd be lying if I said I didn't see this coming."

" _ **State the pass phrase in ten… nine… eight…"**_

"Isabella!" They simultaneously called out. "Anything on the pass phrase on that paper?!"

"Oh yeah! Right, here we go…"

She scanned the piece of paper with her eyes, hurriedly searching for any pass phrases mentioned.

"Ah! Here we go! Alright, extend your right arm… and point upwards with your index finger…"

" _ **Five... four… three…"**_

"Isabella! Hurry up!"

"I am! Let's see, and then you yell out in the enclosed mic… I AM DIVORCED AND I AM FREAKIN' PROUD OF IT!"

The girls all held their breaths as the countdown abruptly stopped. Silence overtook the room, before finally the computerized voice began to speak up again.

" _ **We know you are, Miss Charlene. Security protocol disabled. Please proceed to your Secret Weapons Vault."**_

The girls let out several large gasps of relief as the laser pointers disappeared from their heads. The lights above them flickered to life, forcing them to put their hands to block the far-too-bright light. After giving themselves time so their eyes can adjust to the light's intensity, they began to walk to the big entrance gate across the room.

On the way, Adyson crept up to Milly and whispered. "Hey Milly, did you—"

"Don't worry. We've found our next Denver!"

The two girls chuckled, but was soon silenced again by the sight that lay before them.

Petrified, all seven of them chanted a long "Whoa!" at the same time.

Without turning her paling face away from the contents of the Vault, Gretchen asked, "So, Isabella, do you want to call the rest of the guys _now?_ "

A short silence followed.

"…Yeah. Sure, why not. Go ahead."

* * *

 _ **Cliffhanger!  
**_

 ** _Don't look at me like that. The story got so large I had to split it into two parts. The second part will hopefully be up next week.  
_**

 ** _Oh, and did you get what song I based the scientists' number of? Try looking up 'Do you hear the people sing' if you didn't.  
_**


	4. Armies and Allegations, Part 2

_**So you're going to ask me about the inexplicable, very long delay. Well, I was actually pretty lucky to get something this finished in two and a half weeks. Have your laptop ever experienced an assault by a brother who is DEFINITELY a little young to know how to use computers?**_

 ** _Enough said.  
_**

 _ **So, I ended up having to recreate the chapter entirely from memory, and I gotta say, looking back, it looks pretty good. Hope you enjoy it!  
**_

* * *

A flying platform moved just below the ceiling, zooming high past the indescribable bustling mess of in-progress creations that can only be brought by three thousand evil scientists communing their works under one roof.

The rider, that was bald and wearing an orange jumpsuit under a labcoat, stopped above a thirty-foot tall scientist that was busy placing the wires inside of his Inator.

"Well hello there, Dr. Diminutive. Care to tell me what are you working on?"

The gigantic scientist looked up from his creation and squinted. "Rodney? Shouldn't you be busy working on your latest 'Inator'? Note my usage of air quotes, please."

"Ah, but that's exactly what I came here to say. And by say, I mean brag, of course. Behold!"

The man on the platform, now known as Rodney, pulled a purple ray gun from his pocket and displayed it as close as he can onto the tall scientist, hereby known as Dr. Diminutive.

"What the… That's impossible! You finished an Inator _faster_ than me!?"

"Yep. You may say that I'm incompetent at being evil, but this proves that I can scratch the dark surface! Hahaha!"

"Really now?" Diminutive narrowed an eye. "I don't believe you. For all I know, that thing could be so shoddily crafted it'll crumble on the first shot!"

"It won't, I assure you. Pay attention, as I demonstrate—"

"Hey you two! I didn't promise a part of the Tri State Are so you could chat all day!"

The two turned to see Doofenshmirtz and the Norm v1.5 below. The former dictator had his hands on his hips and an expectant scowl on his face.

"Ah, Dr. Doofenshmirtz. Perfect timing, I suppose," Rodney said, floating his platform down to level. "I was just about to demonstrate my fully-working Inator to this unbelieving little colleague of mine."

"Hey watch it," Diminutive suddenly added. "I could squash you between my fingers right now, and no one will complain."

"You're finished with your Inator?" Doofenshmirtz replied, raising an eyebrow. "That's a bit faster than any scientists I've known."

"Exactly! I just need a test subject to dissuade any claims that may point otherwise. Would your robot be willing to volunteer?"

"Go ahead," he rolled his eyes. "He's gonna go with anything. Anything at all."

"Evils are great, but only if you know how to aim it!" the Norm cheerfully added.

"This robot's a bit cleverer than I thought. Now stand still…"

Rodney aimed his Inator to the robot's head, and pulled the trigger, releasing a loud *POP* from the gun.

Both Doofenshmirtz and Diminutive could only stare with their mouths open at the mess created on the Norm's head.

However, it was soon swallowed whole by its mouth suction feature, leaving no trace of the colorful bits covering his head seconds ago.

"Mmm. Confetti! Always leaves a colorful taste in your mouth!"

Diminutive closed his mouth and rolled his eyes. "Urgh. A Confetti-Inator. Just about what I was expecting," he said, getting back to work.

Doofenshmirtz fumbled with his words for several seconds, before snapping his hands in an accusative gesture. "What the—a Confetti-Inator!? What were you thinking, you idiot?!"

"Ah, Dr. Doofenshmirtz, you fail to think of the esoteric use of the machine," he answered calmly. "What if a member of OWCA is bugging you by not letting you go past something? You could shoot them with this, and the confetti will go straight to their eyes, stunning them! Then you could punch them, run away from them, and plenty more! Besides, this'll save tons on party equipment when we celebrate our victory."

There was only silence between the two as Doofenshmirtz continued to look at him with widened eyes.

"…You know, there's only one person in this universe who can comprehend your way of thinking. He almost gave me a free kidney."

Suddenly, bright red lights and the threatening ringing of the emergency alarm interrupted the conversation. All of the scientists looked up in confusion.

"Oh no! Perry the Platyborg's escaped! Norm v1.5, get me Peter the Panda's commlink!"

"Roger that, sir. Checking transmission link…"

The robot's blue pupils turned into static patterns for several moments, before they glowed bright green. "Success, sir! One message unheard."

"What? One message unheard? Funny, I thought animals don't talk…"

"Playing message."

The outdated Normbot's faceplate retracted into a monitor, which began transmitting the only one voice that can make Doofenshmirtz build up a large 'No!' and ignore the rest of the transmission because he was too busy kicking stuff in anger.

" _Hey Heinz, it's Charlene. You know that this is a Saturday, and you know what that means. Vanessa and I'll be in the Googolplex Mall on our weekend shopping trips, so don't expect us to be back before four hours. We're gonna get some new disguises, dresses and hairdos done. Oh, so that you know, I took 600 bucks from your account, and I also took Peter the Panda to chauffeur the two of us around. I'd have taken my Normbot v1.5 that you borrowed, but then there won't be anyone to keep you safe from your own silly experimentations._

 _"Oh, and P/S: You better not be plotting an evil plan out there, I'm not there to correct all of your stupidly obvious failures! Did you know that your 'ingenious' warehouse trap's window can be broken with a force of 3000 Newtons, just 500 under the maximum strength limit of the cyborg agents? Oops, gotta go, we're here. Ciao."_

Silence.

"Sir? Not to further complicate your rail of thoughts, but it appears that you also forgot to take Perry the Platyborg's wrist communicator."

"What? How did you know?"

"Well, that would be the only logical explanation as to why there are 23 agents flying in beside him on that hallway."

"What hallway?"

Doofenshmirtz turned his head to where the robot pointed, and almost had his eyes burst out of their sockets at the sight of the chaos created by the two dozen wayward cyborg agents.

"Well. How about that, I guess I did. Hold on, I gotta make a speech."

He took out a mic from the hole inside the Norm's stomach and began to speak to the public.

"Evil scientists of the Tri-State Area, as you undoubtedly have seen, the agents of OWCA have penetrated the base's defenses and are now laying waste to every evil machine they can find. I know that you know there's only one thing to do at a time like this…"

Every single scientist in the room returned at the top of their lungs:

" _ **RUN FOR OUR LIVES! IT'S OWCA-GEDDON!"**_

* * *

"Holy cow, check this place out! It's got… oh goodness, I am _speechless!_ "

"We knew you'd say that, doc," Isabella said, looking up. "This is what Candace tried to hide from us… I just don't know why."

Lined along the overwhelmingly wide walls were at least 15.000 robotic replicas of Charlene Doofenshmirtz, each kept frozen in suspended animation. As if it was built on purpose, each and every one of them stared unblinkingly at the center platform, which coupled with the freezing air conditioner adding even more chills running at their skin.

"…Well." Ferb suddenly spoke up. "If there's one thing to pull out from this, that lady has _far_ too much ego."

Several mutterings of agreement were given from the others.

"So what do we do with this vault?" Phineas asked.

"The only thing we _can_ do," Isabella answered, pointing her finger across the frozen robots. "Get back up to the surface, and get enough charges to blow this place to pieces."

"I am afraid not, Isabella," Baljeet cut in. "Assuming that you can find enough explosives to cover all of this Vault, which would likely deplete the entire explosives supply of the entire Resistance, an explosion of that caliber would likely set off devastating earthquakes to the surface!"

"What?"

Isabella, who was already clutching a grenade in her hand, sighed as she put it back into place. "Great. So we can't use explosives. What else do you got?"

"Hmm... All of those pods would need a power supply to function. Maybe we can find a master control panel to cut off the power, preventing these robots from being activated ever again."

"Well, you heard the doctor," she said with a wave of her arm. "Get moving, people. Let's find us some computers!"

* * *

"Normbot! Change into an escape pod! We need to get outta here, ASAP!"

"Confirmed sir. Changing."

Doofenshmirtz barely ducked his head from the stray laser blasts buzzing all throughout the lair as the Normbot v1.5 reconstructed his body into an escape pod.

"Whoa, that one almost hit my eyepatch! Hurry up!"

"WAIT! I'm coming with you, dang it!" Rodney yelled out through buzzed gasps, running from the ensuing chaos of the central hall. "I am _**not**_ going back to the Tri-State Penitentiary! _ **Whatever the cost!"**_

Rodney used his head to ram his way inside the Norm-scape Pod, crashing headfirst with a loud *thump* into the seat.

"Well that was unnecessarily injurious," Doofenshmirtz quipped. "But apparently effective."

"Thanks. Learned it when they dropped the soaps in my '94 jail time."

"Hey! That idiot got a ride, what about me!?"

The former dictator turned his head to a scowling Dr. Diminutive.

"Er... I don't know how to put this into terms you'll understand... Hey Normbot, why don't you tell him our issue with not letting him in."

"Of course, sir," he said, no change in his cheery tone. "Dr. Diminutive, not to state the obvious, but you are 30 feet tall."

"Wait, I am?" he asked, sounding almost surprised. "Well why didn't ya just say so from the beginning? Sheesh!"

The giant doctor pulled out a small ray gun and shot himself with it, causing him to shrink down to a more moderate size of five foot two.

"There. Now move, I gotta get in!"

The now name-fitting scientist jumped inside the pod, and sat comfortably on the third seat.

Doofenshmirtz closed the pod's door, asking to him, "Wait, you can change your size at will?"

"Well yeah. How'd you think I got through that tiny window you call a lair entrance? Fun fact: I was going to enlarge this pod to thirty foot tall, but then I'd be the only one stuck with the tight space."

"Hm. Fair's fair I suppose."

Doofenshmirtz turned his eye to the window and moved up, operating on the cockpit controls. "Alright, that's three passengers and two agents closing in, Norm! Let's move, move, move!"

"Roger, sir. And as an added fact, it was not necessary to hit your fist on the ceiling."

"What? Evil scientists are theatrical by nature. You better get used to it."

The Norm-scape pod jettisoned off the ground with a loud rumble, taking off through a hole left from one of the other escaped pods. Perry, seeing his arch-nemesis trying to flee the lair, unfolded his wings and flew above the massive fight, and chased him across the depths of the water.

* * *

"So ma—uh, I mean Candace, what's with the brand new cape?"

"Huh? This thing?" She looked down to her black piece of cloth, which was covering up the entirety of her body above the knee. "Oh, it was just a bad piece of intel. I was told that I was going to a funeral party, and I didn't see any coat hangers around here."

"Funeral party?" Stacy scoffed. " What's the saddest thing in the world got to do with the best time in the world?"

"Huh?"

"I mean, funerals are l—Hold on. Did Jeremy tell you this?"

"Uh… yeah."

"Oh goodness, he's been getting that wrong ever since the plans for the party were started." She pointed a finger at the teenage boy. "Jeremy, I told you a million times! It's not pronounced _fyun_ -eral. It's FUn-neral! With an 'a', like in 'a' fork!"

"…Whoops. My bad."

"Meh, it's okay," Candace replied coolly. "I was going to bring this cape anyway, funeral party or no. It helps me… calm down."

She snatched a flash of a glance at something beneath her cape, but turned back before anyone could notice.

"Anyway, I propose a little competition," Stacy announced, leaning back on her chair. "You know, to see the master Candace Flynn at work!"

"Really now? What do you propose?"

"Watch this. If I may be so bold, I think you'll be a little impressed."

Stacy took a pea that was plucked to a toothpick, and launched it in the air with a flick of her fingers. In the fraction of the time it took to plummet down, she pulled out a baton with two little sharp ends on the edge of it, and struck the toothpick with the baton's narrow center in the air. The sheer force of the strike sent the pick flying across to the dartboard 400 feet behind her, to which the toothpick managed to claim a solid bullseye. Cheering from the crowds can be heard behind her as she held back a firm smirk.

"Whoa! That's incredible! You-you didn't even get up from your seat!"

Hearing this, the girl's face immediately lighted up like a display of fireworks, squealing in delight all the while.

"Oh my… oh my goodness! You have no idea how much that meant coming from you! Of course, that was just little old me..."

She slid down the baton across the table. "If I know anything, the master will beat me on my own game."

Candace took the metal stick, and twirled it around before settling a smirk.

"Alright then…. Bring it."

* * *

"Nice place…" Phineas pointed his flashlight to the leaky plumbing above him. "Don't you think so, Ferb?"

Ferb raised an eyebrow.

"You know what I mean. Besides from the death robots, this could actually make the perfect spot. You know, logically speaking. It's big, it's dark… it's _private._ Just put a bit of hologram projectors to set the romantic views, and—"

Silence.

"…Yeah, you're right. She'd just sooner knock me in the head for trying. It's just…"

" _Hey guys! I think I found something!"_

The brothers turned to the hard echo of Buford's voice.

"Looks like it'll have to wait. Come on, let's go!"

* * *

Phineas and Ferb climbed up the last set of stairs, meeting the rest of the group in front of a wide steel door.

"So, what have you got?" Baljeet asked, crossing his arms.

"Check this out, people. This door here's locked with an impassable keypad. Believe me, I even tried that fingerprint vision goggles you got. I got nothing. There weren't even any stains of a print, like it was never been used! But looky here, when I slide it up like this…"

Buford unscrewed the latches of the keypad and threw it out, revealing a fingerprint scanning port.

"A fingerscan lock?" Isabella asked. "Does this mean we can't go in without the lady herself?"

"Hmm…" Baljeet raised his eyebrow, then smiled. "Perhaps not necessarily, my friend…"

Baljeet walked up to the scanner, where he pulled out a folder and took out a small transparent stamp from it. When he stuck the stamp inside the port, it glowed bright yellow for a few seconds, and the doctor stood back with an open grin as the door zipped open with a loud clank.

"Huh... Maybe I should get tired of asking this, but _how_ on earthdid you do that?"

"Pfft. I just took precautions," Baljeet replied nonchalantly, putting the folder back into his pocket. "That folder contains the prisoner records of exactly one Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz… with his fingerprints in the bottom, as per standard tagging procedure."

They walked inside the chamber, which contained a large computer terminal, with three screens and countless buttons stuck on its pads. But even then it was dwarfed by the sheer size of the CPU units sitting beside it, some of which are tall enough to scratch the ceiling. In the place of the northern walls were large translucent windows, giving a perfect view into the main Vault, and the 15.000 thousand robots sleeping within.

"Right then…." The young doctor cracked his knuckles as he neared the terminal. "This must be it…"

* * *

"I think we did it," Rodney said, pinning his face to the rear window in the escape pod. "I think we're homefree!"

"It's too early for celebrations, you fool!" Doofenshmirtz slid his head to catch a peek. "We've got one more agent onto us!"

As the pod broke the water surface, Perry flew even faster to close the distance.

"Hey Normbot! Do something about our fly in the sky!"

"Roger, sir! Deploying main cannons!"

The escape pod's outer shell slid back to shape two laser turrets, each just a bit larger than Perry himself. Without delay, it fired off to the pursuing agent, forcing him to slowly give distance between himself and the pod to evade the rapid laser fire.

Of course, nobody inside that pod really expected him to fire back.

Which is when the pod evaded, none of the three expected that they would all be flying topsy turvy, spinning like apples in a mixer and hitting every possible thing in the room.

By the time the pod stabilized itself, the three scientists were lying upside down, with limbs entangled with each other and sprawling all over the place.

"Hey, a word of advice, Norm: when it's your turn to do the fancy maneuvers, _**warn the darn passengers first!**_ "

"Sorry sir. It is beyond my capacity to expect that you failed to see the standard warning sign that is placed on all standard-issue escape pods' ceiling."

The one-eyed man looked up to the ceiling, and finally he saw the warning to passengers that demands them to wear their seatbelts, and that any kinds of damages are not covered by any kinds of insurances whatsoever.

"…Was that thing always there? I thought safety warnings are the bane of all evil science."

"Please, sir. If we didn't, we would have lawsuits flying at us from across the whole board of safety."

* * *

"You got that thing working yet?" Buford said, munching on his emergency sandwich. "It's near lunchtime."

"Patience, Buford. I may make it look easy for you, but be assured… I… am… getting… close. Aha!"

" _ **Main Vault Override Command Prompt selected. Select your command."**_

"See?"

* * *

"Uh, guys? I think my foot hit something important."

The other evil scientists turned to Rodney; or rather, his foot, that was stuck deep under his own seat.

Doofenshmirtz, still trying futilely to untangle himself from the tangled mess of limbs, asked, "What on earth did you hit?"

"I don't know, it… feels like a button of some kind. I'll take care not to press—"

Rodney let out a shrill yelp along with the others as Norm another unexpected barrel roll down.

When he was actually calm enough to breathe, he could only groan amidst the gasps.

"…Never mind. My foot just pressed it."

"You fool! I bet that was the self-destruct button, now was it!?" Diminutive panicked. "We're stuck 8000 feet in the air, and you're telling me we're gonna be nothing but a fireworks show!? What have you done?!"

"Calm down you idiot," Doofenshmirtz jaunted. Groaning, he finally wriggled himself out of the pile and strapped his seatbelt on. "That's not the self-destruct button. Otherwise there'd be a giant countdown! …isn't that right, Normbot?"

"Thankfully enough, you are correct sir. That was not the self-destruct button. That button is located in a classified location."

"Pheew. Thank goodness," the three said collectively, letting out a huge sigh of relief.

"Hey, wait a second. If that's not the self-destruct button… then what does it do?"

Rodney managed to unstick his foot from under the seat at last, then turned around to give the button a closer look.

"Hold on, I think I'm seeing some kind of label on that button! It says… 'this is all your fault' ?"

"All your fault?" Diminutive put a finger under his chin. "Well I sure haven't done any large scale evilness in over a month… what did you do, Doofenshmirtz?"

"How should I know? Charlene made this robot, and I sure can't remember all of the slights I might have done against her!"

He went silent as he fixed a look to the ceiling.

" …but I'm pretty sure _she_ can, though…"

"Hey, hold on!" Rodney squinted to the button. "That fault's not spelled with an F. I think… I think it's spelled with a capital V! Yeah, that's right. The label said 'this is all your Vault' with a capital V!"

"A Vault? Charlene never mentioned any vaults to me. Well, besides the one she used to keep her gold bars. Oh, and the one where she keeps her special brand of breaded eggs, too! And the one that keeps her squirrel lures. Nasty creatures, I tell ya. Once one of those slipped into your pants…"

Doofenshmirtz's one good eye turned wide as headlights; the telltale sign of an imminent flashback.

…

"Hey! Doofenshmirtz! Are you rippling on us?"

"Wha-oh! Force of habit. That's one of the remarkable events before our divorce. I think it might have contributed to it, too. Anyway… Normbot! Did Charlene ever mention any kind of Vault to you?"

"A difficult question, sir. I believe she— _ **Playing pre-recorded message.**_ "

"Hey, how did your voice turn even more evil than my own set of Normbots? …And how soon can you make that your default voice?"

The mic turned up another new voice, and again it was the voice of Doofenshmirtz's ex-wife.

" _Nice try, Heinz. Don't you dare go around me by asking the question to my minions. If you're hearing this, it means you just asked them about one of my secret files. MY secret files, Heinz. Don't you know just a bit BETTER? Ugh, so much for being polite._

 _But - I'm getting ahead of myself here. After all dear, I'm evil, not uncivilized. Provided you don't poke about anymore, why don't you come to the penthouse next weekend and ask me nicely about it? Maybe, you'll get lucky and I'll tell you what you need to know."_

Silence.

" _Hahaha! I'm being sarcastic, of course! Wow, I swear you're so gullible sometimes! But wait – am I being sarcastic? Or am I just pretending to, so that I can recreate our affair on the 6-12th? You'll never know. Come here and find out… And P/S: Do bring your own leather suit this time around. Hehehehehe!"_

After the tape cuts, and after a long, long bout of uncomfortable silence, Diminutive finally broke the ice with a forced cough.

"… Leather? No offense, but that is one messed up lady, dude."

"You do realize I can tell the Normbot to jettison your seat, leaving you to plunge 8.000 feet to be a messy pile of goop on the ground?"

Silence.

"… Point taken."

* * *

Buford was snoring peacefully on the floor with sandwich crumbs strewn all over him when the alarms rang throughout the facility.

"Aah! Aah! 6 AM! 6 AM! Drills, _drills, drills!_ Gotta get to the field, gotta get to the-"

He stopped running in circles and looked around.

"… Wait a minute. Where's the angry redhead? Heeey, this isn't our HQ."

" _ **Warning! Emergency Activation Command confirmed received from Normbot Type v1.5-001. Reawakening android subjects."**_

"Nyeh…. Close, but you don't have that silky cold anger voice she has."

Hearing the sirens, the rest of the kids ran inside to check on the room.

"What happened, doc?"

"I do not know! Someone is sending an activation command from outside!"

"Outside? Does she know we're here?"

"It does not matter. Before I was interrupted, I was just one push away from..."

" _ **Override Deactivation Command denied per Protocol 227-M."**_

"… Uh-oh."

" _ **Commands can now only be sent from Backup Master Control Remote, reserved for lower level familial relatives only. For plot convenience, Backup Master Control Remote Platform will be spawned in 3… 2… 1…"**_

When the countdown reached zero, a small platform raised itself dramatically from underneath the floor with a set of lights attached to it, all ending with an arrow pointing to the glass-domed top. The insides of the dome itself was blocked by smoke, which added a pneumatical sound effect as the dome opened slowly by ever slowly, to reveal that it held only dust, some small drops of water, and absolute nothingness.

"What the… _Where's the- where's the remote!?"_

Buford only looked at the empty platform with half-closed eyes. "Hmm. If anything, she's definitely knowledgeable in the arts of evil lair contingencies…"

" _ **And an extra note to the incompetent keeper who made the Emergency Order necessary; this is all your Vault, and THIS is all your fault."**_

"Oh sure. A callback joke which origins we will never learn. That lady sure knows how to rub the wounds in, too..."

"Yeah, but be honest; which one of us expected that it _won't_ end like this when we found this thing?"

Silence.

Simultaneously, all of the kids voiced their agreements on Buford's point.

As the young doctor busied himself with searching for other ways to destroy the robots, the others noticed that while the vault was still silent, the robots within it, while waiting for their cryogenic pods' doors to open up, were certainly mouthing something, and in a perfect unison too. As the intercom began to play an orchestra overture at this point, they all came to the same conclusion.

Phineas was the first one to speak up. "They're… they're singing?"

"Hey! We all sing at least once a week," Buford replied. "These people haven't got a chance for like, three months! Give 'em a break."

"Thank you for your support, dear child!" One of the robots suddenly yelled out through the intercom speaker. "Not that it will be appreciated for long!"

"Man, these ladies even know how to make a death threat sound like an invitation to a party! What _don't_ they know?"

"Right now?" Isabella suddenly replied next to them, stretching her whip's coils along with the rest of her troop. "Heh. The ability to _fear_ us, apparently. But they'll learn…"

The orchestra finished its overture just as the pods fully opened up. As the central floor began to sprout out platforms for the robots to march down, they began to sing a forceful hymn in perfect coordination.

 _At the end of the day,  
you're another day older.  
And that's all you can say for the life of the bots!  
It's a struggle, it's a war,  
and there's nothing that anyone's giving!  
One more day sleeping around,  
what is it for?  
One day more crossed to the digits!_

 _At the end of the day,  
you're another day uglier.  
And the shirt that you wear is no longer in fashion!  
And the mistress hurried past,  
she didn't hear the little ones crying,  
but we're still, say it with us:  
ready to serve!  
One day relieved of idling!_

 _At the end of the day, there's another day dawning!  
And the sun in the morning's already risen!  
Like the waves crashed on the sand,  
like a storm that'll break any second!  
There's a hunger in this Vault,  
there's a boredom still need to be purged out,  
And there's gonna be children to displa-a-ay!  
At the end of the day!  
_  
All at once, the Charlenes pointed their eyes to the window the children are hiding in, blinking three times in rapid succession…

"Hey wait a sec… Are they—"

"They're firing! _Get down!"_

…and simultaneously fired off the largest wave of eye lasers known to them yet.

This of course, backfired horrifically for the robots, because only then did they remember one horrible fact: all the glass in their Vault are made to be 100 percent laser-reflective.

The near millions of red laser beams bounced readily through the entire room, mangling hundreds upon hundreds of the Charlene robots caught within the storm.

"… Okay. I certainly wasn't expecting _this."_

"Whoa! That's the prettiest lightshow I've ever seen in my life!"

When all of the lasers finally died out, the robots were left in a mess of flying wires and electrical equipment; the ones that were lucky not to be shot full of holes ran around to the corner in sheer panic.

"How many did we lose?"

"4000 at the minimum, working on the exact count!"

The children were too stunned for words; but Phineas summed it up best.

"Well, all things considered, that was easier than I expected."

* * *

"So then I said to him, sir, your kitten could be a hero! And then this kitten starts meowing real cute when…"

Candace felt something vibrating on her pocket.

"Uh, could you two excuse me for a sec? I think my phone's ringing."

She got out of her chair and strolled back as far as she could without appearing suspicious; once she assured herself that they can't see, she pulled out the Backup Master Control Remote she stole just yesterday.

The remote had two large buttons above a series of smaller buttons. One of those large buttons was glowing green, and a green blinking sign lighted up above it, asking her to push the button to complete the deactivation command.

"They've started…"

She snapped herself from her thoughts, stopping her finger from five more feet's distance to the button.

" _Not yet,"_ she thought. _Not yet, Candace. Trust them for once. Didn't they keep telling you that?"_

" _Trust them… Heh, you mean let them get killed?"_

" _No!_ No… They've faced those odds twice. They came through."

Only after she finished that line did she realize she was saying the thought out loud.

"They came through… and they'll come through now."

Shakily she lowered her hand from the front the button, and put the remote back into the pocket behind her cape.

"Out of sight, out of mind… They really need to check that rule for holes."

Forcing a cheery smile on her face, she moved back to her seat.

"So Candace, who was that?"

"Oh, that's… just the guys back home. They said they've found… a raccoon pit back at the penthouse's backyard. Don't worry – if I know them, it'll be… well taken care of…"

* * *

"Dang it! This is not my definition of well taken care of, doc! They're climbing the stairs now!"

Isabella looked down the window again to see the robots moving in on every hallway leading up to the control room; when she returned her sight to the doctor, she found him still fiddling with his communicator.

"Hey! Are you listening?"

"Aha! Got it!" The young doctor suddenly shouted. "Everyone, follow me!"

Baljeet ran across the room and punched a piece of the wall. The wall panel lighted up white, and opened up the larger wall panels next to it, unveiling a hidden elevator behind them.

"Quick, get in!"

They didn't waste any more time. Once everyone were in, Baljeet hit the button to the lowest floor on the Vault.

"So what's our plan here, doctor?" Phineas asked.

"Okay, I have uploaded what is left of that console into my personal communicator. I can take control of the cameras, but that is pretty much it. Now, there are three generators sitting next to each other in the sub-basement level. If I can get to just one, I can rewire it to function as a crude EMP bomb. We blow it up…"

"We can fry the entire Vault with a chain reaction and be home before 3 o'clock!" Buford finished. "Let's hurry up, I got rocks to break – and 200 bucks to get back."

They waited in silence as they readied themselves for a tense 6 minutes until the elevator stopped moving.

When the doors opened on their exit however, they didn't expect the presence of three dozen robots waiting for them on the elevator's exit.

"Hello there, sweethearts! Surprised?" One greeted them. "Well of course you are, I mean, humans are _so_ predictable. Am I right, girls?"

Several chuckles and yes-es were thrown at her.

"B-but how?" Baljeet hurriedly asked. !We saw you – all of you – climbing up the stairs to the Control Room! How did you go down a hundred levels and reach us when the nearest elevator's two miles away? Plot convenience? Whatever the heck that means?"

"Heheh! You're quite clueless for a Resistance member. You see, if you'd paid attention, you would've noticed that the main vault chamber is built to be tall, not wide. We'll have plenty of space if we, say, form a tower, but there's not nearly enough space for us on the ground floor. So as luck would have it, some of us were carried off to guard some other areas when we woke up, and in _conveniently_ for you, there's at least a thousand of us between here and the generators. Isn't it great?"

Looking at the children's loss of words, she only chuckled.

"Anyway, I'm getting off topic." Her arm turned into a laser cannon, barrel pointed threateningly to the children. "Any last words?"

"Uh, I do, actually," Phineas said raising his hand. "Is there a chance that you'll let us into the generator room without anyone getting hurt?"

"Hahaha! That's cute, dear. There is a chance that we'll let you into Madame Charlene's lair without anyone getting hurt, though! What do you think about that?"

The robot then suddenly raised an eyebrow.

"Hey, wait a second… I don't even know where Madame Charlene _is!_ Hey, any of you know where she is?"

All of the robots shook their heads and said numerous variations of the word no.

"Oh, come on!" She turned her head to her fellow androids, lowering her weapon from the humans' faces. "I was just about to be all scary-like to these kids, then you tell me we don't even know where our master is? Dang it, I'm trying to make a first impression on the human race here! I mean seriously…"

The robot didn't get to finish her sentence due to a baton striking right on her neck, separating its head from the body.

Before they even realized that the children are attacking, they were all helplessly struck down by whips, sticks and lasers aimed to the head, all applied with extreme force and speed. Not 30 seconds had passed, and all thirty-six of the clone robots lay downed on the ground, some in more pieces than others.

"Soorry," Phineas stretched the word to a downed robot. "We tried to bargain a deal."

"Hey," Isabella greeted, putting a hand on his shoulder. "What'cha doin', talking to dead robots?"

"Trying out this bragging to dead enemies thing. I still don't get the point of this, by the way; they're dead anyway, who would listen?"

"Heh. It comes with experience. Don't worry, you'll figure it out… probably. Now come on, we got a thousand more of those things remaining. Maybe you can try it out on them."

* * *

Diminutive forced a palm on his mouth again, holding on to the pole next to his seat, even though he already strapped on his seatbelt. "I swear, Doofenshmirtz! If this darned robot flips one more time, I'm gonna throw up right here on this nice bear rug you got!"

"Hey, you're not the only one about to vomit here, buddy. I would stop this thing if the platypus would stop firing! You got any ideas on that?"

"Gentlemen, if you would, I think I have a plan to take out our persistent enemy."

The two scientists turned their heads to the third scientist and craned their necks to the side.

" _You?"_

Rodney only sighed. "That was a very painful and exaggeratedly condescending expression of distrust. Work on that, please. But, yes, I'm afraid I am the only one in this painfully incompetent group that can actually manage to form a plan good enough to take care of Perry the Platyborg. Sad as I am to admit that I-"

"Alright you fool, we get it!" the two shouted at once. "Just tell us your plan already!"

"Hmm, but I'm afraid with Dr. Diminutive about to reach his limit, I think we won't have time to explain this plan. But don't you worry, you just need to have complete faith in me."

"Faith in the guy who thinks he can conquer the Tri-State Area with a confetti sprayer," Doofenshmirtz said dryly, eyes half shut. "Well, I've been in worse."

Rodney scooted over to the window. "Alright then, we wait until the next volley… and, now! Hit the brakes!"

"Brakes? What, do you want to surrender? Because I can throw you off that window right now!"

"What did I say earlier? Trust me! Or would you rather be covered by Diminutive's sticky vomit?"

Silence.

"… Fine. Normbot, you heard him! Hit the brakes!"

Without warning, the robot skidded himself into a halt in the air, throwing its passengers far off balance (prevented from being blown across the room by only their seatbelts). This of course made Dr. Diminutive glow even a brighter shade of green.

"Okay, better hurry up! If the Normbot's insides get stained, I'm billing Charlene's nagging on both of ya!"

Outside, Perry too stopped unexpectedly in shock of his target's sudden surrender. He very nearly avoided a crash only by a couple of inches away.

"NOW!"

Rodney jumped up, opened the window and blasted Perry with his weapon right between the cyborg's eyes, causing the agent to fall out of the air, scratching at some invisible thing on his face all the while.

But when Doofenshmirtz and Diminutive regained themselves from the shock that Rodney would just shoot an agent in the face, they realized that it wasn't laser he was shooting; it was tiny little pieces of party-grade confetti.

"Now again! Normbot, blast him!"

"Will do, New Major General! Firing!"

The Norm-scape pod fired its double cannons on the falling agent, hitting him square on the chestplate. This damage was coupled a second later by a booming impact with the ground, which resulted in a Platyborg-shaped crater that was at least 3 seconds deep.

Back at the pod, Rodney was busy cheering - for himself.

"Yes! I win! I win! Muahahaha! See? See? I told you it had an esoteric use! Who's an idiot now, huh!? Huh!? Hahahahaha!"

The two still sat silenced like statues, eyes still wide as headlights.

"... I got nothing more to say about this. How 'bout you?"

"I'm just glad you'd risk that $1500 eyepatch by holding me so tight by my stomach. That's companionship, dude."

"What the- Alright get off me, you loon. This thing's not gonna get anymore gooey than it already is. And get him a sick bag, Rodney, I'm really not in the mood for explaining to the dry-cleaning guy why I have vomit inside my robot."

But what they didn't see was that Perry did fire off one more shot before hitting the ground; of course, this shot was simply evaded by a barrel roll by the Normbot.

And of course, it didn't bode well for the passengers.

* * *

Way down below…

"And that is how Mr. Cuddles, the Pant-Wearing Cat, saved the day with all his glorious might. Whew, I need some water after a story like that!"

Stacy reached behind her back for the teapot, but raised her eyes when she found a paperbag instead.

"Hey, who bought their own sandwich into the house? And how come I didn't get a piece of this?"

Stacy took one finger down the paperbag and took a taste of the substance contained inside; promptly, she recoiled in horror.

"Hoo boy. That is _not_ sandwich."

Silence.

"Well don't keep us waiting. What is it?"

"Uh… just say it's just like the stuff they serve us every 6 a.m breakfast, mixed with the nasty gunk they made us drink every Doofensday. Gross stuff. But darn if that doesn't remind me of the 2007 Pudding Revue…"

There was a beat of silence as Stacy slowly grew a nasty grin.

"… Anybody got a lighter?"

* * *

 _30 minutes later..._

The crowd cheered out as Stacy strapped the paperbag into an assembly of fireworks, all tied together by a flimsy rope.

"Hey! What's going on here?"

"What's going on here? _You're_ going on here, ma'am! It's the 2007 Pudding Revue rocket!"

Laughing, she torched the rocket's fuse and joined the others in cheering as the rocket launched itself into the sky.

"Ooh boy, here it comes…!"

* * *

"Anybody else smell fireworks in the air?"

"That must be the generators' engine residue. We are getting close."

The kids entered the final room on the hallway, and found a tall tower formed entirely of electrical parts, tied by wires connecting inside the walls, glowing blue every second at random spots.

"Whoa, I can't even see the top of that thing! We're supposed to rewire the circuits _and_ set a bug on all floors of that?"

"Indeed... It certainly looks like it."

As soon as Baljeet finished that sentence however, dim lights activated on all over the walls, revealing hundreds of androids waiting for the children, each sitting on platforms that are attached right above the newly-activated lamps. However, this wasn't the only troupe; another set of lights turned on at the catwalks circling the generator tower, lighting the hidden wave of androids on the complete dramatic lighting set.

"I don't think so, children," one of them shouted from above. "Your road ends here. You've done enough; now surrender!"

The Resistance children did no response, each only speaking unspoken signals toward each other. Their feet moved slowly inch by inch, ready to jump to the closest cover at the first shot.

"Are you ready?" Isabella asked, voice little beyond a whisper.

"Hold on," Phineas whispered back. "Do we have a plan beyond 'charge blindly to get to the generator?' "

"We do. You and Ferb'll protect the doctor while he does his thing on the tower. The rest of us will try to distract their fire. Simple."

"Huh. So that's a no, then."

"Ready? In three… two… one…"

Without warning, the group fired their blasters first, knocking down several androids right away, before immediately throwing themselves to cover as the room lighted up with the response fire.

Phineas and Ferb stayed back with Baljeet as the rest charged ahead, climbing the walls and/or stairs to the top of generators, taking out any robot they could see while evading any fire with near-superhuman acrobatic maneuvers.

"I think they mentioned a circus once, didn't they Ferb? Looks like we just got ourselves a free sample!"

The boy turned to the young doctor, still fiddling with his communicator. "Ready to move, Doctor Baljeet?"

"Hold on, Phineas. I have a hypothesis pending conclusion in… three minutes and counting."

"What are you working on?"

"Well… the evidence is flimsy, but, the short of it is, I believe that the tower we are targeting is not the real generator."

Both the brothers raised an eyebrow. "Not the real… Why would you think that?"

"Think this – that generator is exactly what all evil scientists will build for the one weak spot on their impenetrable fortresses. Ridiculously practical for the heroes, and can shatter the entire fortress if attacked correctly, like those ones both in real life and in the movies, correct?"

"Right. So?"

"But then I thought. We are dealing with someone who would pretend she was divorced just to get out of tax, cut costs on vacations, and to prevent a mutual capture, among many other benefits! I have not heard one evil scientist who would actually go so far for their evil schemes. That means, although she has the regular evil scientists' builders complex, she _knows_ how to hide the important things when it matters."

"So you're saying that..."

"What if what she did on the staged divorce, she did again to this generator? Keep the resistance busy with a gigantic decoy piece while keeping one small unit in disguise so it can do the cleanup once the large one is downed?"

The brothers blinked in realization.

"That… I don't know how, but that somehow makes a twisted sense."

"Of course it is. I am simply infallible. Now I need only to wait for my x-ray tests to—aha!"

"Did you find where the real generator is?"

"I did! That tower fooled my scans before because it does hold an electrical current; but only enough to power the hidden elevator running inside it. But, I have detected faint electrical currents on the far side of this room which are not present on any other side, hidden behind the wall! We only need to open the wall with another hidden switch, and then we can end this once and for all."

"Great! Let's go! Dr. Baljeet, we'll need you to keep pace as fast as you can. Now, we know your records on tennis-golf goalball, and…"

The doctor only chuckled at the two. "Oh please. As much as I appreciate your condescending warnings, _you_ are the ones that need to be careful. _I_ have my own personal deflector shield."

"…. You have a personal deflector shield? Why didn't you tell us?"

"Oh, sorry. A _prototype_ deflector shield. _I_ am simply infallible, but the equipment I work with are not. Now come on, we need to finish the fight!"

The three children vaulted out of cover and sprinted across the room, to the wondering sights of the android shooters.

"Watch it, their tech guy's moving. Two escorts. Take him out first."

"Yep, we got it. Say, speaking about moving, where is #001 with the rest of the ground level people? We're gonna need everyone we can get!"

"Hmm… she'll probably be here in 2 to 4 minutes."

"What? You actually got through to her channel?"

"No. But it looks like this fight's gonna hit the gavel soon, and we all know the cavalry _always_ arrives when the fight's on its highest climactic point, right?"

Silence.

"… Point."

* * *

 _Meanwhile, way way up above…_

"Aha!" Rodney scratched the final item on his card. "Firework rockets on the sky! That's a bingo for me, people!"

"Wait, rockets on the day?" The two other scientists raised their heads. "What idiot would launch fireworks while the sun is up?"

"Hey, don't believe me, go take a look out the window."

Diminutive and Doofenshmirtz did exactly that; but only Diminutive squinted at a familiar sight.

"... Wait. A _white_ rocket? Void of any colors whatsoever?"

"Yep. That's the one!"

"... Oh no."

"Huh? What's oh no mean?"

"You fool! Why did you take us on the sky precisely when they're feeling sentimental!?"

"What are you talking about?"

"The _2007 Pudding Revue,_ you moron! It's one of the cherished reasons why I stayed outta town!"

"What Pudding Revue? If there were pudding involved, I think I'd known."

"Are you seriously telling me you don't even remember the incidents occurring on your rule?!"

"Hey, I got hit by incidents pretty much seven days a week, buddy. That's, like, half the part of being a dictator. You gotta fight the resistance formed by the undermanned, underequipped good guys who'd lose every battle they're in against the empire until the camera starts rolling in on these little boys who—"

"Enough! I'd eject myself right now if I don't care for my life, but unfortunately I do, Doofenshmirtz, so I'm telling you; _keep away from the fireworks!_ "

"Alright, fine. The Normbot probably got it from all of your incessant rambling. Now could you stop grabbing me by the suit? It's kinda itchy."

* * *

Isabella destroyed the robot out of the platform, and jumped across to the one to her left to dodge the laser blasts. When she looked down, she saw Phineas and Ferb pushing boxes to block the eastern side wall from the rest of the room.

"Hey!" She yelled out to the two. "What are you guys doing?"

"Isabella! That tower isn't the real generator! They've tricked us!"

"What?" She ducked down from a missed laser shot, and used her deceased robot's blaster arm to fire back. "You're sure on that?"

"Absolutely! Doctor Baljeet should be nearly done with the generator..."

"My friends! It is nearly done! Now I just need to find the restart button on this thing, and..."

Baljeet fiddled around with the metalwork of the machine, and found the button he was looking for, hidden behind a well-hidden cover of fake steel plate.

"Found it! Just one push, and- whoa!"

Just as he was about to push the button, an invisible force grabbed Baljeet into the air, and threw him clear outside the hidden room.

"What the- Doctor Baljeet!"

But Phineas and Ferb too were soon caught by the same invisible hands, and were also thrown across into the main room.

When nonexistent footsteps were heard knocking across the ground from the hidden room, every single android stopped firing, which of course left the eight resistance members fighting them puzzled...

Until they all looked to the direction the androids were looking: the place where their three friends landed.

From the empty air in front of the three children, out came two android robots from their invisibility cloaks, but they were visibly a much older model than the rest of the army - for evidence, they had microphones in place of real mouths, and had hundreds of rivets that run in parallel lines through their entire body.

The first one spoke up, but instead of words coming out of her mic-mouth, it was just pure unrefined static, loud enough to make the three kids wince in surprise.

"Hear ye, hear ye!" The second one announced. "To you Resistance members! Stop your fire and drop down into the ground floor now, or your friends will have to do without a head for the rest of their lives!"

"Hey, you and your cronies best do what she says, honey," the robot next to Isabella said. "Number oh-oh-one _always_ means business."

Grudgingly, each member slowly jumped down to the ground, dropping their weapons in front of the two antiquated-looking robots.

" _Bzztstssshkfs."_

"Thank you for your cooperation, children," the second robot behind her translated. "Now that we're on equal footing, I think we can talk comfortably."

" _FFsskhtbbzzt."_

"I am known by many names. Well, two, really; the first one is simply Number 001. And some of the people here call me Numero Uno, which means the same thing, but in Italian."

While the two robots were busy priding themselves, Isabella ran the numbers through her head. The Number 001 robot was standing awfully close to the hidden generator; if only there was a way to…

" _Dfaghsccctksst."_

"And please, don't try anything funny, children. If you know me, you'll know that I am the first and most powerful unit ever built on this army. To use a rather tired analogy, I am functionally similar to the former general Perry the Platyborg. I cannot talk, I have rivets and obviously metal parts, the first but the most powerful unit built…"

But then Isabella put a hand over her mouth to hide a smug grin. The robots just gave her the perfect analogy.

Struggling to keep the smirk down, she began to send a message to the rest of her troop, disguised as picking her nails. As expected, none of the robots noticed this at all; they simply kept on chattering.

 _Katie. Remember our talk before?_

Seeing the message was pointed to her, Katie responded back with her own message, which she disguised as twiddling her thumbs at a certain rate.

 _Which one?_

 _Weapons safety._

There was a tense moment as the two looked at each other.

… _You sure?_

 _Go. Now._

At this, Katie let out a sigh, which did not go unnoticed by the two robots.

"If you say so… but I'm doing a Bard one-liner before that."

Katie then suddenly stretched her arms to the side, drawing the full attention to the robots.

"Hey! Lady robot people! Would you like to hear a small piece of advice from a humble girl?"

The two robots looked at her, and laughed their face off at the same time.

"Very well. We were just about to move to the last words section of this thing anyway. Go ahead, child."

With a cute little smile, Katie answered:

"Thank you, madams," she said, complete with a mocking bow. "Oh, and a tip; the early bird catches the wire."

With that, just within a split fraction of a second, Katie pulled out her taser from her pocket and shot it at the Number 001 Robot, sending her into immediate cartoonish spasms and wild takes. Of course, these series of sudden movements brought her roplling to the generator, where her hand was kind enough to stomp on the restart button before moving to slap herself in the face.

"…uh-oh," was the collective response of every single robot in the room.

" _ **Warning 30 seconds to EMP Bomb explosion. All personnel, evacuate area immediately**_. _ **"**_

"We had better get going," Baljeet exclaimed. "Follow me!"

Both humans and robots trailed close to the doctor as he ran up to the metallic tower, albeit for completely different reasons.

"Stop them! Don't let them get to the elevator!"

"Elevator shaft code, come on, come on... Ah! Here we go..."

The young doctor entered the code in the digital keypad at the tower base's walls and pulled the lever next to it, opening up a hidden elevator in front of him.

"Yes, it works! Everybody in, now!"

The children ran in, taking down any robot who got too near to them or to the elevator. Eventually they made it through; but when they did a head count, they noticed one person missing.

"Hey... Where's P-"

"Hey guys! Oof, a little help?"

They squinted to see Phineas still busy in the middle of an enemy group, not close to fending all of them off.

 _ **"Explosion at 20 seconds."**_

"Oh great!" Buford said, stretching his arms at the sky. "Someone's gotta get him!"

"There's not enough time to get there," Isabella noted. "But I have an idea... Ferb, clear a path, will ya?"

The boy nodded, and twirled his two (looted) blasters, before firing them off at the head of every single robot standing between Phineas and the elevator.

"Okay... That's good enough. Best of luck to you..."

Isabella pulled out her whip again, and lashed it out at the vacant stretch, upon which the whip tied itself on Phineas' leg.

"Uh, Isabella? What are you-"

"Hold on, rookie boy! Wahoo!"

Without warning, she pulled back as hard as she could, throwing the whip and Phineas into the elevator at breakneck speed.

But she forgot to think through the part of where he would eventually land...

"Whooaa!"

The two barely had time to scream before they crashed headfirst into each other.

"We got him! Now let's go!"

Buford preemptively pressed the up button, closing the elevator down and sending them away from the blast.

With that, everyone let out a collective sigh of relief...

Until they got an eyeful at what boy and what girl were blushing on top of each other.

* * *

" 'And then I'll soar to the top, ' she said, 'like an eagle whose feather I would sport in my helmet as I shattered my many enemies...' "

Candace, who was barely keeping track of Stacy's story of the (supposed) 2007 Pudding Revue, furrowed her eyebrows when she felt something vibrating on her back pocket again.

"Who's that, Candace?"

Candace took out the vibrating object out of her pocket...

And then she realized that she kept the Backup Master Control Remote on her other pocket, and the object she was holding is her beeping cellphone.

"Ugh. It's nothing important. Probably just a 'BC' from my mom. It's always-"

She suddenly stopped herself when she realized upon yet another fact: the vibration hasn't stopped.

"Wait... If that's not the phone, then..."

She took the hidden remote out and saw the blinking sign:

 _ **Destruction Sequence #053 detected. Please press button to repair immediate Level 3 Networks. Warning: The android army within Vault must be manually repaired**_.

"I... I can't believe..."

Stacy looked at Candace, who was looking like she could tear herself a new mouth with that wide smile.

"Uh, Candace? What's with the-oof!"

She was lucky she never let relaxed her body out of her drilled-in stance from the Resistance; otherwise, her body would feel a lot thinner from the sudden crushing hug.

"THEY DID IT! THEY DESTROYED THE VAULT! THEY STOOD UP AGAINST AN ARMY, AND THEY WON!"

Laughing, Candace spun Stacy around in sheer joy, making the girl feel even weirded out.

"Okay! You can let go now!"

Stacy tok a few gasps to make sure her lungs weren't crushed, then gave Candace a small smile. "I see I'm not the only one stuck telling a story today, huh?"

"Stacy! You gotta come with me back to the penthouse. If this is right, that means my brothers just fought an entire army of robots, and won!"

"Your brothers? Aren't they a little-"

"-young to use weapons that actually works, let alone to use it against a robot army and somehow win? Funny, I've said that before. But then they broke me out of a no-survivors prison. Twice."

"Really? Sounds kinda... far-fetched."

Hearing this, she suddenly chuckled.

"Heheheh... Yes. Yes it is. But they went and did it anyway."

Candace suddenly jumped her way to the parking lot, shouting, "Jeremy! Come here, we could use your help with the bike brake locks!"

But then, she stopped and looked behind her, where her large cape was flowing out against the wind.

"Oh, why do I need this thing anymore?"

She unwrapped the cape from her neck, and left it to the increasingly errant wind.

"You're no longer needed, large and overbearing 610-gram cape. Your time is out. Peace!"

She flashed the two finger V salute to the floating cape, as it was blown away by the wind to who knows where.

Five seconds after the cape was blown out of sight, she silently muttered: "Ugh, I gotta ask her how that works if we meet again. Feels overblown… Great, there goes a pun."

She turned back to her two companies and saw them already taking off the bikes' chains.

"Hey, wait for me!"

* * *

Perry ignored the stares of the crowd as he kept speeding on the trail with a wheelchair propelled only by his feet's mini jet engines. As much as his systems were damaged, he was not willing to lose Doofenshmirtz's trail at any cost.

Dodging the something-thousand car honking its horns at him, he still kept one eye on the road, and one eye up in the sky…

* * *

"Well this is weird," Doofenshmirtz said, looking at the monitors onboard. "It says the fireworks here are jamming up the navigational systems. How is that even possible?"

"You used the commercial GPS model for your mapping system, now didn't you?" Diminutive dryly replied, holding a deck of cards against Rodney. "I actually didn't expect anything more out of you. These fireworks drive up rain clouds. They're made on special liquid. I don't know the specs, but I can tell you it's gonna rain soon. Oh, I almost forgot the part where we're all going to have something horrible happen to us because of the fireworks. Just let me have my last peaceful game of cards, okay?"

"I told you, it's fine. So the Normbot's mapping is a bit jammed. …enough to make him completely blind without visual contact, apparently. So what? As long as some giant tarp/cape doesn't cover his face, we're all going to be perfectly fine."

Rodney and Diminutive shared a look of terror, before pointing it simultaneously at Doofenshmirtz.

"What's that? Why are you giving me the stink eye?"

They shared yet another look, and started to count down with their fingers.

"In 3… 2… 1…"

….

Dead silence occurred for five more seconds.

"…If this is some kind of joke against me, people, I'm still waiting for the punchline."

"Huh. Looks like it hasn't happened yet," Diminutive said, looking around the room. "Well, you know that thing people like to call 'sardonic asides'? Well…"

"Hey, Doofenshmirtz," Rodney called out as he looked down at the window. "Did you say that the Normbot will be _completely_ blinded if something cuts off its visual contact with the ground? As in if something covers its face?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"Just asking. Where's the nearest parachute?"

Curious, Doofenshmirtz looked at the window Rodney just left from, and saw a giant tarp/cape moving to cover the Norm-scape pod's face.

"Oh yeah. Three rules of evil safety… Sardonic asides will be punished…"

"…with imminent destructive calamity that will result in your doom," the three finished simultaneously.

Again, silence took over as the cape grew closer and closer.

An oddly serene Doofensmirtz moved to the table and brought up three glasses of cold soda.

"…So, anyone like some water before we start screaming for our lives?"

* * *

Perry squinted as he looked up, where he saw yet another ridiculous contrived coincidence that saved his mission; in this case, a giant tarp covering the Normbot's face, preventing it from seeing the ground which it's about to hit in 3… 2…

The far-away, barely audible _kaboom_ brought a large relief to Perry's heart.

"Age—t P? A-en- P?"

Perry looked at his wristwatch communicator, where an image of Major Monogram pops up, but got repeatedly cut off by static before stabilizing.

"Agent P? Looks like the fireworks really did a number on our comm systems. Carl, get those antennas straight! ….No! Wai-stop, okay, bit more to the… Alright, that's enough. So, Agent P. We just confirmed your visual that Doofenshmirtz's escape pod crashed at the northern edge of Danville city limits, by an extremely lucky break I might add. But then again, an extremely lucky break is pretty much how we got free from Doofenshmirtz's grasp in the first place…"

"But, with Doofenshmirtz's escape pod down, I think I can say that your mission is complete, Agent P. Leave the forest combing to the Crow Team. Go back to HQ so you can get those damages fixed. We wouldn't want your family to worry. Monogram out."

With a smile, Perry saluted back, and went his way with the wheelchair.

* * *

…

Silence.

"Comfy there, Phineas?"

"Well, uh, I…"

"Good. My lower intestines are already crushed. Why don't you come up here and crush my _ribs_ next?"

"O-oh! Oops! My bad. Sorry, let me just..."

Awkwardly, he pushed himself from Isabella's stomach, cheeks red as a rose.

But when he regained his bearings, he noticed that behind her hand, her mouth was trying to muffle a sound.

Giggling.

"What's so funny?"

Just as he finished the question, she suddenly burst out into full-on laughter.

"Hehe... Hahahaha! Sorry, I can't help it! You always look so funny when you're embarrassed!"

She mouthed something silently on the bottom of that sentence; however, she underestimated how inclusive his sister's training was.

"Did… did you say I was-"

But he was rudely interrupted by the swish of the opening elevator doors.

They were all relieved to see that they were back in the court gardens beneath open skies, sure; but far more interesting than that however, is the sight of Candace waiting by the door.

"Hey, you two! Took you long enough."

"C-Candace! It's you!"

Ecstatic, the two brothers ran up to hug their sister, with enough speed and force to make her stumble back.

"Candace, you won't believe what we did just now!" Phineas started to pour out the words, much faster than he usually does. "We found a vault, and-and a robot army, and then there's the revival, a-and the song... A-and you hid it from us! Candace, you found the enemy's biggest weapon that's right under us, and you hid it from all of us! Please, _please_ tell me you've got a good reason. You... You always do, right?"

She chuckled, shushing her brother quietly with a finger on his mouth.

"Of course I do.

"Think it this way; Doofenshmirtz's attacks on the city aren't getting any easier to shut down. I'm gonna need every one on the line if we're going to catch him, but I can't stop shivering at the thought of you two getting out there, risking yourselves so cheerily when you could be dead at a drop of a trigger!"

"Wait... You're still thinking like that? After all that we did for you? All that we did _with_ you?"

"Of course I am! And I'll always think like that until I'm sure it's not just some mysterious force that keeps you out of trouble everytime I'm not around!"

She let out a large sigh.

"Let me start from the beginning. I was just going about my day as usual when I found the map leading to the vault on a hidden shelf about a week ago. I messed around with the entrance gates all week long, but I found how to open it just yesterday, while the rest of you people was busy with Baljeet's thought experiments.

"I snuck to the control room and got the schematics of that Vault. I saw that generator thing, how easy the system could be compromised with a single EMP bomb. But then this great idea flashed in my brain. I thought: Why on earth would I just blow the place up and pretend it never existed, when I could get you two to do it for me? I'll get proof that you two _can_ handle yourselves in a fight, thereby clearing up my worries once and for all!"

"Candace... You set us up into a death trap without giving a sliver of a clue?"

"No! Not... Not by choice. By necessity. Just the thought of releasing you into a virtual death trap almost tore my insides out. I almost gave up and pushed the button myself a couple dozen times. If it wasn't for Isabella finding me out when I got back up to the gardens and pushing me off everytime I lose my nerve on the plan, this whole thing would have never gone off the book."

"Wait, Isabella?" The two turned to the smiling girl. "You were in on this too?"

"And thank goodness I did. She had a good idea, but she didn't have the guts to do it. She told me to keep everything under wraps from everybody to keep the act two are her brothers, and she won't dare to put you into harm's way... Not without the rest of us keeping an eye on you."

"Hey! Speaking of keeping an eye..." Candace raised an eyebrow, with half a smirk forming on her mouth. "Isabella, you were the one that insisted on letting my brothers loose on their own. Several times, even! So how come you were the one that saved Phineas' life on that elevator?"

"Heh. I was hoping you didn't notice that... Well, what can I say? He had too much potential to be cut loose. We wouldn't want to lose that adorable baby-face from the group, now wouldn't we?" She grinned, pinching Phineas' right cheek. "Heheheh..."

"...So you're saying that you hid this," Ferb asked her. "Not because you were afraid of it... But to shape us into full-fledged fighters?"

"No. You're wrong. You two already _are_ full-fledged fighters from the beginning. I was just too stubborn to believe that."

She knelt down to their level, putting a hand on her brothers' shoulders. "But now I do. And I think - no, I _know_ \- that you two will be fine. With or without me."

With a smile, the siblings hugged again.

As the three broke off, something surfaced to Candace's mind.

"Say, do you remember the party that I told you I was going to earlier?"

"Yeah. But you said those parties are for grown-ups only."

"Eh, what the heck. You're all as grown-up as me in my book now. Come on, all of you. You'll love it! There's a new friend of mine that would love to meet you all..."

* * *

 ** _And that concludes this month's chapter. Now excuse me as I sort out and secure the rest of my documents._** ** _Oh, and speaking of the documents, some deserving facts about the next chapter:_**

 ** _Up next, we get back to the 1st Dimension, but in four years into the past, as 6-year-old Ginger prepares to enter her first swordsmanship/acrobatics concert, and her sister tries to dissuade her from entering, both by the easy way and the hard way..._**

 ** _Thank you, and good night/day to you, ladies and gentlemen.  
_**


	5. The Golden Girls' Games

**_I blame (the grief of) the end of summer for my lateness. No further commentaries (by me) are necessary.  
_**

* * *

"Come on, Stacy! Show some more effort into it!" she drawled, closing one eye and sporting a toothy grin.

"Why're you talking with a pirate accent? _Whoa!_ " She barely ducked from the strike, and was barely parrying the rest of them. "I thought we were fencing!"

"What, can't I have some…"

Her opponent slipped her blade on the handle, and swiftly pushed up, ejecting the blade from the Stacy's hands. Her surprise made her fall on her rear, and her foe didn't take a second to point the tip on her blade above her neck. Stacy snapped her eyes shut and shot her hands up in the air.

"…fun?"

11-year-old Stacy slowly opened her eyes, revealing her attacker standing on top of her, a triumphant smile plastered on her lips. The girl jumped back up to her feet, pretending that she didn't just let out a howl that sounded exactly like a toddler terrorized by a clown and a mime.

The victor giggled as she wiped her forehead. She sent a hand to her sister, which she took in both sporting and disdainful fashion.

"So, do you still think I haven't got what it takes, Stacy?"

She leaned a hand on the tree and took several huge gasps before answering, making sure to put on a disapproving look and tone as she slowly formed the words.

"…I told you… I'm not… a fencer, Ginger. You will lose… against… aprolancer. I mean fencer."

* * *

"Oh come on, Stacy!" Ginger exclaimed, taking her beret off and rubbing the top of her head. "What's gonna make you see? I can do it! I will get my first place, and I bet I'll only get three spots of bandages at most!"

"No, Gingeeer, you won't." Stacy knelt and grabbed her sister's shoulders. "You know what'll happen if you don't listen to me?"

She flipped to the same side as Ginger, and made a sweeping motion to the skies, whispering to her ear.

"You'll see to it that your bones are broken, all at the very first round, too. All those sweet, precious phosphorus, that wasted all of their precious lives on growing those young beautiful bones of yours, all reduced to fine, chalk dust, waiting to reform back into chalks so that they can write in blackboards, except they can't because they lost their lives for you. And you'll waste their sacrifices, for a pitiful, misguided attempt at attention. How would you feel about that?"

She leaned ever closer, crawling her fingers on the younger girl's back.

"Do you want to know how they were lost? Ooh… now we're getting to the good part! You'll fail a somersault, 100 feet in the air. Your body will strike the safety net, but it'll bounce you 43 feet due west, causing you to have a forceful impact with the ground, shattering your fine white crystalline bones to a million little pieces… Can you hear it already…? Woosh! Aaaahhh! Crraacck…!"

She then waved her fingers around and made jazz hands, all the while making little cloud-high squeaks. "Owww! My bra-a-ain! Why, oh why, didn't I listen to my mighty, beautiful and genius of a sister!? Whyyy?!"

She chuckled a bit. "Boy, I'm good! I should get a patch for that! They have an Impression Patch on your scouts group, right Ginger?"

"…They're called the Fireside Girls, Stacy. And yes, they do have an Impression Patch. You just made the wrong kind of impression to qualify. That, and you're not actually an official member."

Stacy stood back up, pointing the accusing finger at her. "Anyway, Ginger, you're not going to that competition. Not as long as I'm still here, alive and breathing."

"…why?"

" _Why!?"_ She shook Ginger by the shoulders again. "Oh, so you want to hear the extended cut of the skull and cross-the-bones story! Good, good! Just let me catch you a box of popcorn!"

"Okay, oka-aa-y, I _gee-et-ttt i-i-i-itt_."

When Stacy let her go, Ginger shook her head and clutched her gut. "Look, Stace, I find it sweet that you're really that worried about me, but I—"

"Worried? Me? About _you?"_

Stacy howled in laughter even harder than before.

"Ha-ha-ha! I'm not worried about _you_ , silly! I'm worried about _m_ _e!_ If you get yourself a trip on the hospital, all of mom's attention will fall on you! You, the singularly one and only you. Forcing the sweet, innocent little me to be expelled entirely from the parent attention index!"

There was a short pause as Ginger tried to form a reply.

"…Oooohh… see, that makes a lot more sense. But you don't have to worry, sis, 'cause I won't get in the hospital anytime soon!" She shook her fists, making the most convincing expression she had. "Just admit that I can do it!"

"You're a funny kid, Ginger. I—" She picked up her ringing phone. "Ooh, it's Candace. Gotta go. And remember these pitiable phosphorus! They won't like you if you don't obey me!"

"It's actually calcium, Stacy!" Ginger yelled off to the distance. "Calcium's the primary component in bone forma… "

She let out a small sigh.

"She never did listen much to science stuff."

Meanwhile, Stacy took fifty steps far from the tree before answering the call. "Yello?"

"Hey Stace!" Candace's voice greeted spiritedly. "You ready for our trip uptown?"

"Trip? What trip?"

"You're a real cahoot, Stacy. Our trip to the All-Kinds Movies Showcase Festival, of course!"

"W-ww-what?"

"Alright, come on, don't mess around. So, how 'bout you meet me at the Derp Store in thirty? We'll walk the rest of the way."

"Our trip to the… Mo…"

A short moment of silence ensued, as the winds blew awkwardly to cover.

"…Stacy?"

Stacy dropped to her knees and shook her fists at the sky.

"NOOOOOOO!"

"Stace?! Stacy, talk to me!"

"Ergh!" Stacy stood up, cracking her back for theatric effect. "I _completely_ forgot about that trip! And I can't go now, I got a busted arm from that brick wall!" She rotated her bruised shoulder, wincing as she rubbed the injured spot.

"You got a busted arm from a wall? Okay, what the heck were you doing? And how come that you didn't take care of yourself? I mean this is probably the biggest moment of our lives! We'll get to say goodbye to our childhood innocences forever!"

"It's…" Stacy sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose. "It's my sister! Seriously, that girl's got a death wish or something. I told her not to go, but she's just so _stubborn!"_

"Go where?"

She groaned. "Candace, answer me honestly… Isn't my 6-year-old sister a little young to jump from a trampoline to a haystack separated by a height of 200 feet and engage in fencing with real blunt swords at the very same time?"

"Is that one of those rhetorical question things? Of course they are! I should know…"

"I know right?" Stacy complained. "Sometimes, I feel like I'm—"

Stacy barely ducked from the volley of throwing knives thrown from the tree some distance in front of her.

"GINGER! WATCH WHERE YOU'RE THROWING THOSE THINGS!"

A small echo of 'sorry!" was heard.

She turned back to her phone. "Yeah, you can already tell. I can't go anyway, my mom insists that I need some 'private playtime' with my sister. Personally, I'm more worried about the poor girl cutting off her own arm by mistake."

She watched Ginger playing around with the sword, stabbing the tree and being pushed back by the sword's spring-like reaction.

"Hey! Wait a minute!" Candace cheered. "So the only thing keeping you from going out is your sister trying to cut her arm off, right?"

"Yeah."

"Does your mother know about her, uh… attempts?"

"Well, I think not. She said it was an activity for her Forestfire Girl thing, but nothing else after that. I just found out myself yesterday."

"Well, that's all that I need to know!" Candace can be heard giggling her mouth off.

"Candace, if you have a plan..."

"Don't worry, Stace," she whispered slyly. "We can catch the 3 p.m. encore festival instead, because I know what you're going to do today."

* * *

She opened up the door, panting slightly.

"You're here! About time."

"Candace, I got here as fast as I could! What's this plan you got?"

Candace was sitting on her bed with a small smile. "That's where we get to the good part, Stacy…"

She suddenly jumped out of the bed and pointed a fist at the sky. "You are going to succeed where I have failed so many times _before!_ "

"Enough with the skirting, you've been dealing that on me all the way through the trip on the phone. Just tell me already!"

Candace immediately stopped with the bombastic gesturings. She took small steps forward to her friend, with both hands placed above her heart. Her eyes had an almost dissonant look of calmness on them.

"Stacy, Stacy, Stacy… I am so _hurt._ Did you just doubt me and my none-too-foolproof plan?"

"Well, you kinda haven't told me the p—"

" _Don't you doubt me, Stacy, please!"_ She suddenly shouted, as faint sounds of music began to pipe up. "Don't be capricious or callous!"

She leaned in closer, squinting one eye and throwing a finger in front of it. "This is my skill now, not your skill… And I'm here about to help you go."

" _She's here about to help you go…"_

As the music finally began to make a true appearance, she pushed Stacy off the doorway and forced her to sit on her bed.

"That was an echo, Stacy, ignore it. It's just here to complement the number, don't worry. "

At the moment she finished the sentence, she produced a top hat and staff, and began to sing.

 _Sit down on my bedside,  
put your mind at ease!  
If you relax, you'll see it and then  
Might take time for some sense!_

 _You have seen that in the past,  
I never once did it right.  
But fate's never been really kind to me…_

The music died down, and Candace whispered,"Seriously, I feel like I have a mysterious force or something piling on me. Maybe I'll do a song about it later."  
But then the music came back with full force, making Stacy yelp in surprise.

 _But you'll succeed where I failed!_

 _You got grief, you got worries,  
You got desperation __**galore!**_ _  
And I'm here about to help you go._

 _(She's here about to help you go...)_

The music faded down again, and Candace took several projectors and screens. She set them up around her room at lightning speed, and used them to flash images of her plan to Stacy.

 _The plan… the plan… it is so simple!  
Your sister, she will set it off in motion herself.  
The plan… the plan… it depends on you!  
On what are you and your mom are prepared to do._

Stacy, after being confused for the duration of the song, finally spoke up.

"Candace, the-the music's already off. Why are you talking in rhy— _"_

" _Ssshh!_ We're just taking an expository break! Keep the rhythm up."

As the music took a slow tempo, Candace went and pressed buttons on the projectors, which then showed alternating images of Stacy's family.

 _See, you'll find your mom somewhere in Danville here…  
And you'll see her all calmed down and fine.  
But then you'll tell heeer…  
of your sister's dee-eeds…  
And then she'll switch her light to be downright peeved! _

Hearing this, Stacy's eyes opened wide.

"Candace, that's way too dangerous! What if I get caught in the crossfire?"

"Ah-ha-ha, but you won't. Instead, you'll be rewarded!" She waved her stick around, which Stacy barely managed to avoid. "For being the just witness, who rose against her sisterly bonds to report a misdeed to the person of authority!"

 _It's the thanks, it's the thanks,  
It's the thanks you need!  
And when your mother deals justice, it's gonna be thanks that you'll hear._

 _Now on another note, I don't wanna waste more time,  
The encore's in 6 hours!  
So if you would please hurry up, we really need to hustle up  
To go over the details…  
that I can't really fit in this song._

 _But in your future, the you I see…  
is acting to be my companion at the movies' repeat!_

The music stopped for the umpteenth time, and this time Candace took out a scroll from her pocket. She opened it in front of her friend's face and pointed to the bottom of the form.

"So here's a little contract I whipped up. It says I'm not responsible for anyreputationalsecretationalpenalphysicalpshycologicaldamagecausedbyanymisunderstandingsfromyouormegivenanycontextaboutthisplan. Sign below the form on the dotted lines, please. Here's a pen.

Stacy raised both eyebrows, then blinked twice rapidly.

"…D-did you just go all lawyer-y on me?"

"Sign it or no!"

She rolled her eyes and sighed. "Fine…"

With a dry look, she signed her name on the bottom of the contract. As the form was completed, Candace rolled the scroll up, laughing festively all the while.

" _Yes…"_

And then as the music peaked far stronger than ever before, Candace's bedroom transformed into a full-blown stage, complete with spotlights and singing tiki faces among others.

 _Are you ready!  
(Are you ready?)  
Are you __**ready?**_

 _Into Busting Central!  
Into Grounding Central!  
The Bedroom Penitential!_

 _Can you feel it…?_

 _You'll feel it, you'll feel it  
You'll feel it; freedom!  
I hope you'll be satisfied…  
I'll miss the premiere, but no worries.  
because I'll be here…  
standing to help… you…  
_ _ **gooo!**_

The redhead ran to the other end to the stage and did a little dance to the kickline's music, before sliding on her knees with the lights of fireworks behind her. Her mouth bore a wide open smile, and her arms were outstretched all the way up.

Hesitantly, Stacy clapped her hands to the performance; the downright unsettled look on her face dulled the intention of the gesture.

"Uh… Candace?" She raised a hand up.

'Yep?"

'Just one question?"

"Ask away, my good friend!"

"…Where's your skull mask?" She pointed to her forehead. "You know, the thing that makes your skull all trippy on the—"

"Oh, the old costume shop ran out," she said, clapping the stage away from her room. "I only got eleven minutes to prepare, so I did with what I had."

She went to the closet and grabbed three large pieces of paper. "Now, if there are no more questions, we need to go over the details!"

* * *

At the garage, Candace taped a diagram into a blackboard, and took another stick to pinpoint the steps.

"So, this is the plan that'll grant you your freedom, Stacy. Classic, old-style busting!"

"Candace, this is just crazy!" she replied with a confounded expression. "I mean, you have no idea what my mom is like. Your mom takes out snacks after you fail. _My_ mom takes out groundings for me being a liar and a cheat!"

"Hmm..." Candace put a hand on her chin. "Maybe you're right. But that's okay, we'll just make some changes!"

She erased some 67 percent of the diagram, and drew new schemes in place of them. "So, taking in the factor that your mother has a really tight collar, and taking in that she is probably busy working now… I'd say direct telling and showing can only be deployed as a last resort."

"That's what I'm trying to tell you! The only one to get in trouble from this harebrained scheme is me!"

"Now I already said to you, don't doubt me Stacy. You don't have my ridiculously bad luck…" She holstered Stacy up from the chair by her shoulders. "So that means you'll definitely succeed where I have failed! If you succeed… I'll be so _proud_ of you!"

Stacy shook her head behind her friend's shoulder as she half-heartedly accepted the sudden hug.

"Ugh, alright then. Show me the first step."

" _Yes!"_

She somersaulted back to the board, and pointed to the top of the diagram.

"Now, the first step is always the most obvious step… but we scratched that step, so we need to move quick to the second one."

"Alright," Stacy responded with a deadpan tone. "Tell me what I have to do."

* * *

So later that day…

"This is, uh… hold on one second."

The girl struggled to move her arm inside the bushes, and received no small amount of cuts for trying. After a lot of struggling around, Stacy took the walkie talkie on her pocket, and pressed the red button.

"Ow! Ouch, I'll take care of that later. So here we go… uh, this is Shining Summer to Cadence Caller. Respond?"

"Cadence Caller here, whaddaya got?"

"Update on Tango Primary… Yeah, she's not here."

She did another scan with her binoculars one more time to be sure; there was not even the slightest trace of Ginger's trail anywhere on the fields of green.

"But how is that even possible? Did you check every spot she might be in?"

"Of course I did. I'm not stupid, you know." After another sweep, she cautiously got out of the bush and hid behind a tree not too far eastbound. "I checked every corner of the park, twice! She's not here!"

"Wait a minute." Candace's voice turned a bit sharp. "Every corner on the _park?_ "

"Yeah, the Danville Park. You know, the big rectangular park in the middle of town? Has trees, grasses, bir—"

"You _idiot!_ " Candace exclaimed through the line. "I said check every place you think she might be in!"

"Yeah, and she can't be anywhere else but here!" she replied firmly. "I mean, she does all of her practice here to get away from the crowds."

"Stacy…" a sigh can be heard through the comms. "How long did you and Ginger played knights together?"

"Played? We weren't playing! Well, she was. _I_ was fighting for my life! …Tw-two hours, not counting the one and a half hour when she did it by herself."

"And how long did we go over the steps of the busting plans?"

"One and a half hour. Now why are you asking things that you would know?"

"Good. Now I want you to think _very_ hard before you answer this next question."

Another gulp of air was heard from the walkie-talkie.

"What kind of lunatic practices sports that she already knew she's already an expert in for more than four hours straight, instead of getting some fun to counterbalance the stress of it all?"

"Uhh…"

"Did you guess Billy Clark again?"

"Maybe…"

"Well, because that's wrong, Stacy my sweet. The correct answer isNOBODY!"she suddenly shouted, forcing Stacy to take the device as far away from her ear. "Nobody but _**sharks**_ is that vapid!"

"Okay! Okay! I'll search for her somewhere else."

"And remember to search every corner of _Danville_ when you do that," she reminded. "Seriously, tick tock; I'm missing the festival as we speak, and Jenny won't stop bugging me to accompany her there. Makes a girl kinda buzzy, now won't you know it."

Silence.

"…Is that question directed at me?"

"Oh, just _go_ already!"

"Right! I need to get some real foot work done… Stacy is out, peace!"

"And don't even think about stealing my phrase!"

* * *

 _On the first place she visited, and by that we mean the Fireside Girls Log…_

"I… _phew…_ I finally made it…"

Stacy slurped her third cup of lemonade dry as she wiped her forehead again with an increasingly damp wrist. Struggling to straighten her back and to stop her tired wheezes, she walked up to the door.

"All the way across town…! I mean seriously, if she's not here, I'll…"

She suddenly stood stiff as a statue when something crashed unpleasantly into the back of her mind. With eyes wide open, she slowly raised up her communicator.

"C-Candace… can I ask you…. EventhoughprobablyIdon'treallywanttoknowtheanswer… what day is it today…?"

"Today? It's a Tuesday. Why?"

Hearing her answer, the black-haired girl slowly knelt down, and beat down with pure hopelessness on the door.

"Stacy? What's going on up there?"

"It's the Log! How can I forget!?"

"What about the log?"

"The Log! It's closed on Tuesdays and Fridays for vacationing!"

"…oooh…"

Silence.

"Uh… Continue your gesture of… grief."

And continuing it she did.

* * *

 _On the second place she visited, and by that we mean the barn…_

"Yeah, I've tried. Her number's off. Yes, I've tried it five times! …Yeah, maybe after I'm done with this."

Stacy flipped her phone shut and stared at the big red barn, surrounded by a small prairie with an almost claustrophobic fence when she compared it to the giant meadows on TV.

"Hmm. Wonder if she really meant it when she said she'll do the rodeo thing here. This place looks awfully quiet…"

She gently opened the doors, and found nothing but dozens of cooped cows eating haystacks.

"…Great. She's not here either."

If she hadn't closed the doors early, she'd noticed one cow gazing at her before mooing.

"Excuse me missy, can I help you?"

"Huh? Oh."

She turned her head to see a middle-aged farmer holding a pitchfork. "Uh, no, sir, sorry. I was just about to leave. I—"

"Hold on a second, girl. Did you just open the doors on the barn?"

"The door? Uh, just a bit. Why?"

"A blue shirt… You here for the non-rodeo rodeo?"

"R-rodeo? What rodeo?"

"Don't matter even if I told you, missy. Them cows'll be burstin' outta that fence in three… two…"

Stacy jumped as the hundreds of cows charged down the doors of the barn. In just three seconds, they all formed a tightly boxed formation, all facing down at the girl.

"Yep. I'd say you better run, girl. Don't worry, they'll return here after 6 hours."

"Thanks for the adviiiiiiceeeee!"

The farmer tipped his hat to the running girl. "Don't mention it!"

* * *

"A stampede!? Ooh, she has a lot to answer for when I find her!"

Stacy ran her hands around her pockets, trying to find _something_ to stop the storm of cows behind her.

"How come I have so many things in my pockets? Mirror, make up, comb, powder… fernications? What the—why would I keep a magazine about houseplants?"

She threw the magazine aside, before her hands finally stumbled upon something useful… or at least it looked like it.

"A cow-shaped whistle? Really?" She rolled her eyes. "This looks like a toy for a six-y…"

Her eyes widened, but soon furrowed in thought. "No way. If this is…"

She gritted her teeth and groaned before shaking her head.

"Fine. What choice do I have?"

She skidded into a halt and blew the whistle, causing an ear-piercing sound which shattered everything made of glass around her, as well as causing the cows to halt their stampede, as each was busy blocking out their ears with their feet.

"Huh. Whaddaya know, it actually worked!"

But her relief was short-lived as the cows turned their heads back at her.

"Oh nooo, you won't."

She blew again, this time marching back to the barn. The cows, doing anything they could to get away from the noise, marched away in front of her. Before long, the cows were forming back into formation, crawling back to the barn.

Stacy wiped her forehead, locking the door with a spare rake to be sure. "Man, I gotta thank her later after I chew her out. Who knew that toy really worked?"

Stacy looked up to see a helicopter blustering in close. It threw an end of a rope to the ground, and a person rappelled down using that rope. When she finally got a good look, she saw that it was the same farmer from before, still dressed with the antiquated clothes.

"Well as always, that stampede's always a good show to watch! But mos people usually don't have that whistle you got there."

"And most people usually don't have cows that go berserk the moment they see a ten-year-old girl," she added sarcastically. "How did that happen, anyway?"

"Thats's not on you, miss. That's your blue shirt."

"Huh? My shirt?"

"Yep. Still can't believe how that particular day turned out. One minute my cows were munchin' on some grass, the next, I saw a blue duck and a pharmacist wrestling on a blimp. Fired a laser beam, hit my cows, and suddenly they charge at me for wearing blue overalls."

"Huh. But how—ah, who am I kidding, I've seen way weirder stuff."

"Yep. 'Tis a strange town we live in."

"Oh! I do have one more question, mister." She showed him a small photo of Ginger. "Have you seen this girl around? She said she'd be making a trip here this morning."

"Ooh, I know her! Nice girl. Yeah, she was here to buy some fresh milk. Then she walked off that way, to the insectarium way."

"The insectarium? A-are you sure?"

"Yep. Said she's gonna get some fly juice for some lotion. I think it's the new slang of the year or something."

"With Ginger, ya just don't know when she's being slang-y or just plain literal," she muttered. "Thanks for the help, mister! See ya!"

"Yeah don't mention it! Stay on the right side of fate, missy!"

* * *

 _On the third place she visited, and by that we mean the insectarium…_

"Insectarium?" Candace asked, with a not-too-hidden tone of terror on her voice. "She actually goes to the ultimate nest of creepiness?"

"Yep. You know what they say; crazy girl needs crazy animals."

She shuddered at the sight of the hives of creepy-crawlies caged inside the thin glass boxes. "Ginger, you crazy, crazy girl. Hope that I—"

She stopped walking when she heard something shatter beneath her feet.

"What was that?"

She looked down below, to the dozens of centipedes crawling up on her knees.

"Centipedes. Whaddaya know."

Candace winced at the sudden, ear-piercing static on the other end.

But suffice to say, there were a lot more cracks on those glass boxes when they came in for the morning inspections.

And the monthly budget of the place was thinned on reinforced, fully soundproofed boxes.

* * *

 _On the fourth place she visited, and by that we mean the library…_

"Yes, I know it would be a lot less dramatic, but can't I just wait at the house and ask her when she comes home? My legs are starting to feel like Jell-O, and—oops, gotta go, Candace, they don't like communication devices over here. Or any kind of sounds, for that matter."

She put the walkie talkie on her pocket, and opened the door with a creak.

"Ugh, the library." Stacy shook her head. "The only logical place to find a recipe for insect lotion. First the ultimate nest of creepiness, then the ultimate nest of boredom. What is up with that girl?"

She looked all around between the shelves and the hallways, and found no results.

"Great. Hold on one second…"

She looked at one chair, where a boy sat alone, flipping pages of a book that looked even heavier than the kid himself.

"Hmm. That kid looks like he's been here for a while."

She dashed over to the boy's table and snapped her fingers in front of his face.

"Hey, uh, just asking, but how long have you been sitting here?"

"Three hours," he replied. Stacy recognized a non-American accent out of him; where from, she has no idea.

"Perfect! Now, can you help me on something? My sister's sorta wandered off, and I can't find her anywhere. She told me she likes going into this library, and uh, have you seen her in here?"

"Well, what does she look like?"

"Lemme see, uh… black hair and eyes, a bit of a bratty look on her face… ooh, she's wearing a Fireside Girls uniform too."

"A Fireside Girls uniform?" He raised an eyebrow. "I think I would notice someone wearing that here."

"Oh! Hold on, I got a photo of her right here!" She took out a small photograph of Ginger from her pocket, and showed it to him.

"Uh… I am sorry to disappoint you, but I have not seen her in here at all today."

She slapped her forehead and groaned. "Great, that takes out number 4. Onto the gardens it is then."

Stacy strolled out of the library, muttering things under her breath. "Let's hope that there are no bees or anything murking up down there. I hate bugs..."

The boy, with a slight downward corner on his mouth, looked back and forth between the notes under the table and at the exit.

One more peek, and he scratched the bullet-pointed entry.

"...Hmm. Sorry Buford, but that sixth challenge will have to wait."

He stood up from his chair as he rolled up the scroll and tucked the book on his arm.

"Fate is just, but it is never kind or caring."

* * *

 _On the 5_ _th_ _place she visited, and by that we mean the Gardens…_

"The mall?" Candace asked exasperatedly. " I thought the chorus said the gardens!"

"Well the chorus doesn't know everything, Candace," Stacy answered, taking a bite of her BLT sandwich. "If they were here, they'd realize that I'm inside _The Sandwich Gardens_ , fourth floor in the Googolplex Mall."

As if by cue, the neon sign of the store lighted up, revealing "the Sandwich Gardens" in gigantic colorful letters.

"O…kay… And you think your sister will be there?"

"Nope. I just needed a lunch break. It's past one."

Silence.

"I can already hear your stomach rumbling, Candace. Why don't you join me here?"

* * *

 _On the seventh place she visited, and by that we mean the Steam Lumiere..._

Stacy went around the corner while slurping down her fourth cup of lemonade, still wincing at the spot where she was stung by the honeybee. Wearily, she opened up the door, and ordered a plastic cup order to resupply her liquids.

"Okay then… Could she be… here?"

She looked around inside the coffee shop before groaning in frustration; that was just the 7th place scratched from her list, and she already felt like she already ran a marathon, not to mention that she still had no clue on the whereabouts of her sister.

Taking a sigh, she took her order, and went to the 8th place on the notepad, humming a placeholder tune along the way.

"Hmm-hmm-hmm-hmm… Ginger, Ginger little pest, how I wonder where you're at. Wondering in Danville up so…"

Before she could finish muttering off the second part, she suddenly stopped her stroll.

"Pest…"

With eyes wide open, she gently put her cup down from her mouth.

"Pest…" she recited, holding back a chesire-cat grin of an eureka moment. " _Pest…!"_

Just then, the iconic jingle of the walkie-talkie played on her pocket.

"Stacy! Did you just had an eureka moment?"

"Oh-ho-ho, yes I did!"

"Well don't leave me hanging! Explain!"

Stacy sprinted off to the streets as she huffed a bare explanation to Candace.

"Ginger! When I was there, she said she always put on some anti-bug lotion first to keep the morning flower insects away! She-she just wasted her last bottle on that last bit on the park!"

"So?"

"So! She gotta buy a new one right quick because she's mandated to be crazy prepared!" She spun around a corner, grabbing a lamppost as a pivot. "And the only supply of that brand of lotion is right in…!"

She almost fell down to the curb as she skidded to a stop in front of the block.

"…right in the old medicine store around the corner of the house. I knew it; coffee _does_ equals brainstorms! I gotta tell mom about that after this!"

Panting, she moved her eyes to see a flash of orange move through the exit door of the store.

"T-there she is! Ginger!"

She thundered down the street to catch the runaway sister.

"Oh, hi Stacy," Ginger greeted her. "What's up?"

"Ginger! You little..." She curled each of her fingers into an open fist. "Why on earth did you turn off your phone? I can't call you, and because of that you made me go through the entire town to find you!"

"My phone? You mean this thing?" She took out a small flip phone out of her pocket. "I keep it on all the time. Always prepared, and all that stuff."

"So why the heck can't I reach your number?"

"Well that doesn't make sense. Unless..."

She put a hand under her lips as a small smirk came from them. "Wait... Stacy, were you calling my old number?"

"What?"

"My old number! You know, the one that you kept borrowing because you keep running out of minutes on your own card? And then you lost it in a mess on the junkyard because it was crushed by a trash compactor while you were busy skedaddling down with Candace about-"

"Alright, alright, you brat, I've heard enough," she muttered, shutting Ginger's lips with her own two fingers. "By the way, aren't you a little young to know what Candace and me were doing there?"

"Why yes, yes I am." She bowed her head, tipping the edges of her skirt. "One of the benefits of this proud uniform," she said, chuckling. "But anyway, I'm sure you didn't take a tour around town just to say hi. What do you need, sis?"

"Right! Right…" Stacy shuffled around her pockets, pulling out her phone after several seconds. " Right! Ginger, do you still have that flyer for that silly competition you showed me yesterday?"

"Uh… yeah, it's still here." She took out the piece of paper from underneath her hat. "But about that c—"

"Not now! I haven't got time for another argument. Now come on girl, strike a pose!"

She raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"With the flyer!" She gestured for her to move forward. "Open it up and take a pose. Come on, we gotta hurry, mom's taking her break in fifteen minutes!"

"Uh… okay…" She spread the flyer open, and locked her eyes on the camera lens. "But what does this have to do with mom?"

"Oh, you'll see in a few hours, kid. Say cheese!"

With a wide grin, she pushed the button, and there was the evidence she needed, right on her screen. She celebrated with a full-on maniacal laugh, ostensibly creeping her little sister right off her knees.

"Hahaha! YES! You would not believe how much trouble I've gone through for this!"

She went off the streets with a loud cheer, leaving Ginger alone once again.

"…Well, she'll see it in a few hours, I guess."

* * *

"Well you look spirited, Stacy..."

The doctor munched on her sandwich when she saw her daughter running towards her bench, visibly eager to show her something interesting, she thought.

"Mom, I-"

"Wait," she interrupted. "What do you say first?"

"Oh, come on! Do we really have to-"

"Stacy... What do you say _first?_ "

The girl let out a sigh of annoyance.

"Fine. Can I sit here, please?"

"Yes you can," she said back, sliding over to the edge of the seat. "See, was that so hard?"

Stacy rolled her eyes in response.

"Now what is it that you want me to see?"

"Okay, let me… mom, do you know of that competition they're holding up at the Stadium? The Golden Girls' Games?"

"Sit-Op Triple-G. Yep, they hold it every year now. Always got some of the medics here transported on-site just in case. Did you know that since it was first publicly displayed on 1965, there has been absolutely no perfect, no-casualty run ever on record? And that festival; always keeps the hospital a bit busier than usual."

"Huh. No, I did not. But check this out; did you know that your youngest daughter are about to join up on that same competition?"

At this, she raised a concerned eyebrow.

"Say again, Stacy?"

"No, really! Check this out! I've got proof!"

She showed her the pictures of Ginger with the flyer, with her authorization of entry and whatnot. When she was finished, Stacy pulled back with a hopeful grin.

"See? See? Aren't I right for once? Tell me I'm right for once!"

Her mother only sighed, and rolled her eyes for good measure.

"Stacy… didn't I tell you everyday to use your sense of logic every time, every day?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"Logic, Stacy! Logic!" she suddenly exclaimed, pinching the girl's temples. "Did you really think they'd let 6-year-olds jump through literal hoops of fire without their parents' consent?"

At this, Stacy's eyes turned wide for a long five seconds, before her face dried itself of its color.

"Say again, mother…?"

"Yes. I know what she's going to go through, and I took a risk. I approved."

There was an uncomfortable silence as she just stared at her mother, mind too shocked to form any coherent thoughts.

"I suppose I can't explain this to you at an objective sense. _You_ of all people should have a reason to be afraid."

"What?"

"That's right… I never told you that story again. But I remember it like it was yesterday…"

* * *

 _So there she was, smiling at the crowd, eager to please her mother, and to do what people would call her a little young to do, like she heard so many times in so many places._

 _And there she was, almost surviving. She almost got herself defeated several times by people so much better than her, but she survived. Almost._

 _She jumped through hoops of flames, not with elegant somersaults, but by fumbling around and putting the wrong foot in the springboard, jumping with feet first instead of the head._

 _And yet, she persevered._

 _Until it was time for the acrobatics obstacle course challenge._

 _Just as the others before, she made it out with pure luck;_

 _until somewhere, somehow, she missed._

 _A small loss, people would say .The safety nets would've saved her…_

 _That is, until it bounced her not upward like one should have._

 _With a loud CRACK, she went out cold._

* * *

"You're saying that I once got into that competition? Okay, now you're just pulling my legs out of their sockets."

"Believe me, I still have pictures of that day. You were still smiling…"

She let out a small sigh before continuing.

"The safety net wasn't tied up right; by the time you hit it, you didn't bounce straight upwards, but leaned 43 feet due west instead; your head collided with the hard ground. I can still see parts of it..."

Again, silence took over as she stopped talking, lost in thought.

"... Heh. Now I'm just rippling… It took you 3 hours to come back. I wanted to be the one getting you back up, but head injuries wasn't my division. Thankfully enough, you woke up in just three hours. But you never did remember anything about entering that line in the Stadium… not even now."

Silence again. Stacy made a whistling plunging fall sound effect to break the silence.

"So you're saying that _I_ apparently did the same thing my sister wanted to, but it all ended up horribly. So… instead of _avoiding_ this kind of thing, you purposely wanted and gave it permission to _repeat itself_?"

Dr. Hirano looked up to the girl. "Stacy, you—"

"No, no! Not at all. I'm just trying to find _your_ internal logic on this one. I mean, this is not how _normal_ people think; see, most parents would think to protect their daughters from that kind of harm, especially, if they'd seen it on one of their other daughters before that!"

Her mother sighed, and stood up from that chair.

"Very well. You're old enough to hear this, so I'll tell it to you straight: when you asked me if you could sign up, you literally only had that much stupidity going for you to begin with."

Stacy raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"That's right. You couldn't walk on a tightrope, you couldn't jump past 20 feet, heck, I even saw you get lost on the supermarket every now and then."

"But I still remember what you said all those years ago..."

* * *

" _Say again? You wanted to join the infamous competition, and this is acknowledging the fact that you still need me to take you to the bathroom in the middle of the night? What exactly do you want to gain that guarantees solid injuries?"_

" _What do I have to gain? Let me tell you mother. It's simple: I'm a bit tired being outbested by the people around me. Did you know that Candace once avoided a swarm of cockroaches by simply running that fast? I know I can under the proper circumstances."_

" _So this is a test? To see what you've got?"_

" _Well there's that, but there's also that part where I make you proud of me. Heck, I'll make everyone proud of me!_

 _The mother furrowed her eyebrows in thought._

"… _So, a test of self-worth then."_

" _Pretty much. So you'll let me in, mother?"_

 _She looked at her daughter, then at the pen again._

* * *

"I really said that? Man, I can't believe I sound so cheery back then."

"Neither can I, looking at you now. And there, you can see _my_ problem; 5 years after that, another one of my daughters comes over and says the exact thing, with the exact same spirit. By then, I really almost believed that the history repeats thing actually happen to you. But then I realized, it's not at all alike."

"Huh? What do you mean?"

"You took that part, only by your stubborn mix of courage and stupidity. But your sister had something else you lacked; she had experience. Did you notice she brought a diamond from a top of a mountain once? Or that she bungee-jumped a bit too many times for comfort for a 5-year-old?"

"I keep telling you, that's a stone colored whitish blue, then covered in glitter powder! They really do sell those kinda beatnik paints right now, mom. …I actually got no implausible deniability bits for that waterfall thing."

"Exactly. And I'm betting that you have a bit more of those miracles stored under 'explainable by she's just that good' more than you do stored under 'she made it all up'. Am I right?"

At this, Stacy grew silent.

And it wasn't too long before Dr. Hirano cocked her head to the side, noticing her daughter's brand of silence.

"And I know you… You actually wanted to see her win, now don't you Stacy?"

She immediately deflected that question, however shakily that may be, "W-what? Now why would I want to see her fail horribly, mother?"

"Except that you know that _her_ odds of failing are just a bit lower than she has of succeeding. You should know; you saw more of her excursion than I could.

"…And funny thing is, I could see it in your eyes right now. You really do… now don't you?"

Yet another long bout of silence occurred, before finally, Stacy shook her fists.

"Ugh! That's the 48th time this month alone you tell me that I want something, then I actually believe you, just like that! How do you do that?!"

"Please, Stacy. I'm a doctor. If I can't calm my patients down by telling them what they really wanted, I wouldn't get that far, now wouldn't I?"

"Now, I think you owe your sister an apology. I'll be in my office if you need me again, Stacy."

Stacy groaned through gritted teeth. "Fine..."

"Oh, and an advice? Make it quick. It'll hurt less. Remember, just like a Band-Aid!"

* * *

So she went, dragging herself up and going down the streets, trying to think how to process her supposed lost memory, much less try to explain it to her sister…

Until she crashed into another person and fell down the sidewalk.

"Hey buddy! Watch where you're— oops."

She stood back up when she saw her sister staring back at her. "Ginger? What the heck are you doing here?"

"Oh, I was about to see mom in her office… Looks like I caught your foot at the door, huh?"

"That you did. Anyway Ginger, I need to speak with you too, about—"

"Wait! I go first! Trust me, this'll be a bit more good to you than whatever it is you got for me."

But Stacy already had a vague idea of what she was about to say.

"Oh wait. Now please don't tell me…"

"Well here goes. Stacy, while you were out scouring Danville for me, I was actually thinking about it, and well… since it worries you that much, then yeah, I'm not gonna go to that competition after all. It's just… well, even I can't go against two of my family members' concerns, now can I?"

Stacy opened her mouth to interrupt, but didn't get a chance to.

"I was going to see mom to see what she has to say about it, but then I ran into you, and… well, you can fill in the rest."

Silence.

"…You done… Ginger?"

"Yeah, Stacy. I'm done. What was it you're about to say?"

After another 5 seconds of silence, Stacy suddenly screamed into the air.

"Come on! How come we _always_ do this in the most cliché way possible!? Person A changes her mind about something, than Person B comes to that person and tells her she changed her mind too, making them both opposites again despite already having a change of heart! Now doesn't that scream 'way to make it look like another point cliche sitcom, you stupid!' ? "

At the sight of Stacy suddenly ranting, Ginger tilted her head to the side.

"Funny, I thought you'd be overjoyed. I wa—Wait, go back a bit? _You changed your mind?_ "

Stacy simply smacked a palm at her forehead. "Ugh, now for the obligatory confession session. I hate these confession sessions… Yes, okay?" She waved her hand all around in annoyance. "I changed my mind. Apparently, I've been in denial about your supposed skills for a long time now, and now that I've come to terms with it, I can, in fact, let you go to injure yourself fatally, in hopes that you'll blow my expectations out the water. There, you happy now?"

Hearing this, the younger girl held a look of curiosity.

"Huh. I… I did not see that coming..." she slowly put a hand on her forehead." Sorry. Say, Stacy, just to make sure… have you heard about the Psycho-Pendulum Effect?"

"Oh, we're jumping right back to it," Stacy said, folding back her arms. "No, Ginger, I have not heard about the Psycho-Pendi-whatever. But I assume you did, and now you're going to throw a very long explanation at me."

The younger girl stared at her extended hand, then back at her sister. Eventually, she dismissed her doubts with a shrug, and smiled.

"...You know what? Nevermind, Stace. Thank you."

With that, she suddenly took a leap forward, and took her sister within her arms.

Surprised, Stacy fumbled over a few steps back. "Oh! Oh-o-okay, we-we're hugging now."

Ginger only giggled. "So, what _did_ make you change your mind?"

"Just say I had an enlightening session, courtesy of mom."

"Again? Isn't that, like, the 48th time she did that?"

"Yes, yes it is. And you should be grateful for that! It's the only reason we're having this conversation now."

"Really?" She tilted her head, adding a smirk to her face. "I dunno... Are you sure that's the _only_ reason for your change of heart, Stacy?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, I don't know... Maybe, inside your cold black heart, you really did love your little sister that much! You just needed to shed some light on that, now don't you?"

"Oh!" Stacy chuckled. "Hahaha! Oh is that it, now? Is that what you think, you silly little thing? Well, could a loving sister do this?"

Without warning, Stacy grabbed Ginger by the hands, and proceeded to spin her around, before throwing her straight up high into the air.

But Ginger simply wahoo-ed the entire time with increasing volume as she did numerous poses in the sky, some even more unbelieveable than others, before finally landing in on a standard three-point pose.

Stacy folded her arms. "Well done. You've taught yourself well."

"Please Stacy. You're underestimating me again."

She chuckled, and ruffled the younger girl's hair.

"Now don't make me regret this decision, you hear me Ginger? You go out there, and make your sister proud."

"He he... Yes sis!" she responded with a sharp salute.

And Ginger went off to the far-away background, barely holding her gleeful giggles all the while. After she was gone, Stacy simply shook her head.

"Yep. I just signed her death warrant, now didn't I?"

Stacy muttered off all kinds of complaints, walking away to the sunset. "But it's okay, since she wanted to make us all proud… Stupid sisterly bond getting in the way of common sense…"

* * *

 _In the credits…_

 _On the next day after that, plus 13 hours forward…_

"Ah-ha! I knew it! I knew you'd break _something_ along the way! Even after all that bragging, you're not all that perfect! Hahaha!"

Ginger simply rolled her eyes at her laughing sister, but still held a smile on her lips. "Yeah, sure, go ahead and mock, big sister. At least I _can_ admit that I was wrong. While you took what, like, three weeks?"

"Oh, alright, the little brat's already got her claws sharpened, I see. Just give me my rightfully earned spoils, and I'll be outta your hair soon enough."

"Fine. So since you're only 1/5th right about that, you'll get 1/5th of your money. So… 5 dollars it is. "

"Fair enough," Stacy noted, taking the bill of her sister's hands. "Deal. And as promised, I'm off to the new bracelet stand with Candace. Ciao!"

After Stacy swiveled off the corner, Ginger only shook her head.

She turned and crossed the street, where another person waited for her by the house's backyard.

"You ready to return that sling, Ginger?"

"Yep, for now," she said, taking her 'bandaged' arm off the blue piece of cloth, and unwrapping the three-layer fake bandages off. "Might need it again in the afternoon though. Thanks again for this, Isabella. Really appreciate it."

"You're welcome. You still haven't explained why you wanted to do this though. Care to enlighten a friend?"

"Well, you know how it feels when you fail on something, but then you saw someone else, someone close to you, winning a flawless first place in that exact same spot?"

"Uh… no…"

"Exactly. No person on Earth should feel that feeling. Much less my big sister.


	6. Hearts in Hypnosis

**_Went through a lot of revisions before considered this one right. Actually, this one was supposed to have a prologue chapter accompanying it, but that'll be far too soon._**

 ** _Oh, this chapter was requested by mrdbznarutofan. If you're reading this, sorry for my lateness!  
_**

 _ **Anywho, that's enough from me. Enjoy the story.  
**_

* * *

It was a bright day in the Flynn-Fletcher house, where Linda was organizing plates, and Candace was sprawling on a couch, reading a book from a pile on the table.

"Well, this is something you don't get to see everyday," Linda commented. "Candace Flynn, actually reading a real book!"

"What, this?" The teen laid her head upside down from the couch's arm. "Yes, as out of character as this looks, I have got to get some real reading done. Have I mentioned that epiphany dream where I visited magical elves, scarecrows and whatnot in the world of Odd?"

"Several times, hon."

"Well, now I'm trying to catch up on the days of summer I've left. Starting with learning on how to actually _enjoy_ summer instead of focusing on one narrow, horrifyingly vain objective."

"Hm. I've heard that several times too."

"Hey! What's that supposed to mean?"

She only chuckled. "Nothing at all, dear. Enjoy your reading. I'll be at Vivian's for the rest of the day. It's Checkers Twelve 'til three PM!"

"Sounds fun. See ya, mom."

Candace carried on with her upside-down reading when she heard a familiar voice greeting her mom at the door.

"Funny..." Candace narrowed her eyes at the door. "She never came inside unless…"

"Oh, sure, she's out reading on the couch," Linda said, pointing to her daughter. "See you, sweetie!"

"Thanks, Mrs. Flynn-Fletcher! Say hi to mom for me."

The girl waved goodbye before letting herself inside. "Okay… Where is—"

"Hey Isabella!" Candace waved her hand. "Over here!"

"Ah. Thank goodness I caught you first. So Candace, what'cha doin'?"

"Wondering why did you come over to see _me_. I mean, I think Phineas is still in his room, and—"

"Oh no! Do-don't call him, please. I just need you for this one."

"Really now?" She raised an eyebrow. "Wow, that doesn't come often! That must mean I'm even more important than— "

Candace's head sunk as she hit a realization.

"Arrgh… _of course._ Fine, I'll bite; What does it have to do with your crush on him?"

"Nothing!" she deflected not so convincingly. "Well, uh, n-nothing yet at least. Anyway, listen: what comes up first on your head when I show you this?"

Isabella pulled out a small pocket watch attached to a chain; at this, Candace gasped.

"Hypnosis?! Wow, okay, either this is a not-so-normal step up from your usual shtick, or you're just copying methods off me now."

"I told you, it's not for me! Not right now."

"Huh?"

Isabella pulled out something from her pocket again; this time, her Fireside Girls' Manual Handbook. "Look, I only need something simple from you. Just one simple Hypnosis Patch."

"An accomplishment patch?" Candace raised an eyebrow. "That's it?"

"Yeah. I thought I came to you, since, you know, you've been hypnotized before, so…"

"What? Oh noo-no!" She shook her head. "Yes, I've been hypnotized before, but take note that I was the hypnoti _ **zed**_ _,_ not the hypno _ **tist**_ _._ I can take, but I can't give! If you want to know how, I'll just get Phineas and Ferb to…"

"No!" Isabella caught her wrist before she could go up the stairs. "No, no, those two… don't need to know. And before you ask why I'm so secretive all of a sudden, I have my reasons.."

Oh... the Girls' Secret Code of Perusal. Right," she said, shaking her head. "Well if not them, then… maybe, Stacy? She's one patient more experienced than me."

"I _did_ go to see her once. Well not me, Ginger did, about five weeks ago. And it was uh…"

"It was what?"

"Uh, I can't exactly divulge any details without breaking my Fireside Girls' Oath to her, but I can tell you that she and Stacy got grounded for _three weeks_ straight because of-"

"A giant unspeakable demon straight out of a horror movie, and that's all she's gonna say about that. I know. Stacy told the same thing. Did you know she still panics if I mention that in front of her?"

"Same as her sister, then. But now, you can see my problem. Simply put, I don't know anyone else who's going to help me so readily _and_ is qualified in the field as much as you."

There was silence as Candace thought about her options. At last, she groaned, hitting a palm into her face.

"…Ugh. Fine, hand me the watch. But don't blame me if anything goes wrong, okay?"

"What? You think I…"

At this, she giggled uncontrollably, leaving Candace looking like she was watching a crazy person.

"What's so funny?"

"Hehehe. I'm _desperate_ , Candace, not stupid. I'm not gonna be first target of an inexperienced practitioner. Here's your first test subject."

She handed Candace a small caged rat, and turned away as the teen suddenly screamed her lungs out.

"Candace! It's just a rat. Calm down, will you?"

"Hey! If you want to play jump scares, you should've warned me first!"

Isabella barely held back her eyes from rolling.

"Alright, if you insist. We'll do it in my house instead. I've got plenty of things to secure the rat if it gets loose."

"Fine, but you're holding that cage _far_ away from me."

The two walked away from the room. Just as they reached the doorway however, Isabella suddenly stopped walking.

"Uh, actually Candace, you know what? I think I left a pen the last time I was here. You wouldn't mind waiting a bit on the door, now would you?"

Candace sighed. "Alright. Just hurry up, I got some brothers to bust in fifteen."

"Don't worry, I'll be out in a bit."

Candace went out the door and waited by the front yard. After seeing the door close, Isabella grabbed the book Candace was reading five minutes ago from its spot on the table.

"It's here! Heheh, looks like my luck really does reach its zenith today. If only to prepare me for the catastrophe this plan's about to bring…"

Berating herself for thinking unneeded negative thoughts, she hid the book in her pocket and went out the front door.

But before she got out the door, she looked around, and said:

"Hey, where's Perry?"

* * *

Rolling his eyes, Perry only waited for the Major and his intern to finish cheering.

"Brilliant leg-breaking, Agent P! Now they'll be the one stuck paying for the chainlockers! Hahaha!"

Perry wasn't sure what breaking a leg of a table a block away from OWCA HQ to get access to his lair would do, or why would the Major give Perry such trouble for just a briefing.

But then again, ridiculous sufferings by agents from the superiors' petty not-plannings were pretty much the standard status quo around here.

"Eh-hem. Carl, wipe that part off the camera recordings, we can't let this get to us. And Agent P, your mission: we've noticed Doofenshmirtz taking in purchases for at least 12 pairs of thick tungsten wires, 300 high-grade thermostats and the heating radiation-emitting parts of the microwave oven, and also a very large disco ball, complete with a metal ground support. Seeing how he just got out of the intensive care from being crushed by one of those just two weeks ago, we'd like to know why he bought it, although to be honest, I just think he bought it so he could crush it for the revenge factor. Go and stop whatever Doofenshmirtz is up to today, but try to save the disco ball if you can. We'd like to save budgets for the party room equipment purchases."

Perry saluted, and blasted off from his chair.

"So Carl, ya ready to get our Halloween drill costumes ready?"

He turned to Carl, who was putting on the trademark suit of the equipment debt collectors.

"Just waiting on you, Major!"

* * *

As the two crossed the street, Candace asked her, "So, if you can't tell me your reason for not letting my brothers help you… can you tell me _parts_ of it? Just some tiny bits?"

"I'm sorry Candace, I'm afraid I can't do that. You're smart enough to piece together the clues if I tell you."

"You're telling me I'm smart? Wow… that doesn't happen often."

"Hm. Then this day's a bit special for both of us then."

As they entered the younger girl's room, Candace didn't notice Isabella slipping the book back into her pocket.

* * *

"So how is this supposed to work?" Candace said, helping Isabella slide a table over to the center of the room.

"Simple. You do your hypnosis on the rat. If you succeed, he'll start behaving like a _very_ well-trained dog. Maybe even better than Pinky!"

"Okay, please don't address the rat with a he," Candace suppressed a shiver. "It's unnerving."

"Anyway, once you're done, you'll do the same thing to me, so I can watch and feel the procedure at the same time. After you prove that the trigger can bend my will, you snap me back into consciousness. And there's the whole thing for you! You can go after that part's done. Simple, right?"

Silence.

"Well... I've been through worse."

"Great! Thank you so much for this, Candace."

She took a chair and sat down on the side of the table across Candace.

"Oh, and a footnote: try not to summon a giant eldritchian horror in the process. I really don't need my room to be trashed, nor do I need to be trapped in it for three weeks."

"Ugh. You and me both, sister."

Candace started shaking the watch, positive that she was only mimicking her own session long ago, with absolutely no idea on how the whole thing works.

But she read an article on percussive maintenance once, she thought; if anything goes wrong, she'll use that instead.

"Okay... It's 30 seconds running, and you do look pretty dizzy, rat. If Stacy was right... you'll stop moving and have your eyes clichéd-ly turned to swirls when I snap my finger!"

Candace snapped her fingers, and indeed, the rat's eyes turned to swirls that very moment.

"Hey! It works! Stacy owes me 20.

"Okay, preliminary test time. If Isabella says you're gonna act like a trained dog, then that's what you're gonna be. So go ahead and roll around, why don't ya. Amuse me."

Candace's grin grew wider when it did start to roll around, sometimes hitting its head on the cage; but what she didn't expect was one more human following the rat.

"What the—Isabella, what the heck are you—"

She dropped her watch in terror when she saw the swirls on the girl's eyeballs.

"W-wait a minute... the watch, the cage, and the girl are sitting in a straight line… So when I hypnotized the rat, she was... Uh-oh."

That 'uh-oh' was followed by six seconds of Candace trying to close her gaping mouth, before sustaining the remaining fifty-four seconds in a very long, very loud wail of horror.

In her panic, she stumbled down on her rear, and saw a book falling open from her pocket.

"What the...? But I could've sworn I've put this at the table back home..."

She took the open book between her fingers. "And I could've sworn I've put the bookmark way earlier on the book... What the heck is...?"

She opened the bookmarked page, showing a Chapter 7: Esoteric Fun Activities, Section 3: Hip-hips in Hypnosis.

But before she could get an in-depth read, she winced when she heard something fragile fell to the floor with a *sprack!*.

"Alright, you two, that's enough rolling!" she yelled at the two hypnotized subjects. "Get back to your stations right now!"

As soon as the sentence left her mouth, both the rat and Isabella zapped to their former spots, with Isabella leaning a little too far back against the chair, and the rat locking itself with triple-layer chains within the cage.

"Thank you."

Candace let out a relieved sigh and brought herself up to her subjects; but her eyes inevitably wandered back to the book.

"So now my options are... Get Isabella back to normal and tell her that the procedure works but to be careful with it, and let her go... "

Her head went back and forth; between Isabella and the book, she found herself a new choice.

"… Or, use Isabella to catch up with my month-lost fun _and then_ tell her that the procedure works but to be careful with it, and let her go."

Slowly, a wide grin grew on her face.

"Well... I've been through worse, now haven't I?"

She turned around and showed the sitting girl a chesire grin, complete with pocket watch hanging ominously by her wrist.

"Isabella… I know what you're going to do today."

* * *

 _Doofenshmirtz Evil Incorporated!_

Perry dropped down to the balcony, but before he even hit the ground, he already activated Doofenshmirtz's trap; as he jumped down, a laser fired away from the balcony, but instead of straight up hitting him, the beam wrapped itself around the platypus, laying him in bounds to the floor.

One thing he noticed about the trap; the laser beam tying on his fur was even hotter than the day right now.

"Comfy, Perry the Platypus?" Doofenshmirtz asked from inside the lab, walking outside to see his nemesis. "Well you should. I've built that thing to give you the perfect kind of warmth. But as you can feel right now, warm plus warm equals _hot!_ But before I explain how my scheme will unfold for today, first I need to explain how I got the idea in the first place…"

 _He began to flashback to the Intensive Care ward, where he was found reading a magazine at 2.34 A.M._

"You'd remember my trip to the hospital because the rest of LOVEMUFFIN and I got crushed by you and your implements in that dance show. Mind you, that was the first trip to the ER I had in a dozen years in my entire evil scientist career! I mean seriously, I've encountered Bigfoots, got transported into an alien world at least 16 times now, got into the vacuum of space too many times too count… oh, and don't forget, Perry the Platypus, I was tied into a firework when Love Handel got back. I came out _without a scratch_. Now how do you explain that a disco ball would send me with broken bones, huh? How!?"

Perry tried to give a shrug with bound arms; as impossible as the processes of the world seemed to function, that one gave a platypus pause to consider.

"Naturally, I had to investigate this ripple in status quo. As soon as I was discharged, I went back and tried to remember everything I did then. And first of all, they've got nothing for entertainment than a couple dozen old magazines. I mean like _really_ old magazines, like as in they had sepia-yellowish color stuck into all of the pages. Unfortunately, I had to put up with sticky pages, outdated pop cultural references, and too many other miseries to even start. But then I found something very interesting…"

 _In the ER, Doofenshmirtz flipped the magazine, and as he stumbled into the Evil Scientists Corner, something struck his attention so hard, that he had his pupils dilate in amazement, just as a spotlight from the window shined at him complete with mysterious angelic chorus coming in from the background._

 _That is, until the rest of LOVEMUFFIN pulled out ray guns and started shooting at the ceiling, stopping any kinds of background celebrations, and leaving plenty of rubble to fall on Doofenshmirtz._

"…Yeah. But still, the epiphany from that magazine blew me away! It described the perfect scheme! How to deal with the nemesis, what Inator to build, how to build it, and how to rule the conquered Tri-State Area afterwards! It is perfect, Perry the Platypus. _Perfect_. So naturally, when I was discharged tomorrow morning for destruction of property, I was dying to build that idea to life…"

* * *

 _The flashback switched to tomorrow in the 9 A.M., where Doofenshmirtz was jumping up and down in glee at the exit way lobby._

" _So, Mr. Droolishire… Discharging out early, now is it?" the receptionist said with a very bored tone. " Mind you, this is pretty much standard for every single pharmacist in the Tri-State Area. Most don't even wait 4 days before they start wrecking up the place."_

" _Yeah, I've heard. And my name's Doofenshmirtz! What kind of a doctor are you?"_

" _I'm not a doctor, Mr. Doodimlade, I'm a receptionist. Now please sign here and here…"_

 _Doofenshmirtz grunted as he took the pen. "Just so you know, I'll be the_ _ **sovereign ruler**_ _of the Tri-State Area in a few hours. The_ _ **harbinger**_ _of Danville's_ _ **doom.**_ _You better start cowering now, lady, for I am going to build my army of evil and—"_

" _Take over and_ _ **assume direct control**_ _of the_ _ **TRI-STATE AREA,**_ _and et cetera, et cetera," she replied with sarcasm, giving air quotes for sarcastic point. "We get a lot of pharmacists here, Mr. Dooninger. Some more intensive than others. And we've successfully dismissed_ _ **all**_ _of their claims."_

" _What!? There are evil scientists here that are more evil than me?! How did I not know about that?"_

" _Gee, maybe you can find out once you're the sovereign ruler of the Tri-State Area. Pharmacists."_

 _With a roll of her eyes, she took the signed paper, and flipped it around._

" _Now, please sign here for your complimentary almond brittle."_

 _There was a record needle scratch as Doofenshmirtz put his hands away from the stopped vinyl disk._

" _What did you just say?"_

* * *

"…Yeah. And as you know, when I eat almond brittle, the world becomes a bit of a blur… By the time I finished the box, and recovered from the ensuing sugar rush, I had absolutely completely forgotten about that idea. So, after two weeks hitting myself in the head trying to remember that idea, I decided to build this instead."

The doctor pushed a button on the remote, and a giant disco ball rose up from the floor, held up by a metallic pillar with wires connecting with the pillar to the underground basement. .

"Behold, the Sunbeater-Inator!" he said through the music sting.

"Nice disco ball, huh? Got it on sale. Anyway, this thing works by heating up the air around it with every applicable heating device installed inside it like the sun does everyday. When I push this button again, the Inator'll rise up to the sky and heat it up until the temperature just becomes flat-out unbearable. With this device, I will slowly rise the temperature of Danville up until the citizens are so uncomfortable with the heat, they'll be forced to give me the entirety of the Tri-State Area just to make it stop! Simple, huh?"

Perry only gave him the usual look he gave him at every minute every day.

"Oh come on, I only got a day and a half to refine the works! Personally, I think this is one of my brighter ideas. Heheheh, get it? Bright? As in, like the sun when it's bright and… yeah."

* * *

"So I just sign in… here?"

Candace did as she was told; when that was done, Isabella took the paper at lightning speed.

"Thank you for your cooperation," she said, in a completely dull and monotone voice. "Mind you, this contract cannot be retracted and are classified unless I directly state it as otherwise."

"Don't worry, the deal's easy as a foot. As a return for your service, I won't use you to harm anyone while I have you under my control. What's the worst thing that could happen?"

"I would also like to remind you that I am currently unconscious, and am only operating purely by muscle memory. If you are saying a sentence that is guaranteed to bring about an unlucky curse, I would not be able to stand up and give you a spare foot in which to put your mouth in."

"Hmm. Good for me, then. Anyway, that's my contract signed and my water taken... What do I want to do with an all-doer Fireside Girl troop leader under my command?"

As Candace pondered her mind away, Isabella's head began to slip out of the chair in a dangerously uncomfortable angle. But before Candace can catch her, she already righted herself with a lightning-fast push to her temple; albeit not without getting a loud crack from her neck.

"Might I humbly recommend a trip to the park? I hear the weather is enjoyable today."

Candace blinked twice in rapid succession at the hypnotized girl, and kept the cautionary gaze up until ten seconds, before turning back to the window,

"Huh. Well it is a rather nice day..."

Candace raised her head up when she heard a beep of a digital clock ring throughout the room.

"What's that beeping?"

"Oh, that would be my secondary alarm," the younger girl responded. "That means he's started."

"Who sta-"

She didn't bother to finish when she saw the picture of Phineas taped beside the beeping clock.

"... Right. Well, if he's started, then I gotta—hey! Hey, that's it!" Candace dropped a fist on her right palm, with a grin going through her face. "That's your first assignment!"

"I thought our deal was clear," she replied instantaneously. "I won't harm anyone."

"You won't be, silly! You just gotta s- ohwait, hold on... no, there's no point in changing the buster, I already did that twice... Alright then, you'll just stop him from inventing while I go about my day! That seems like a good compromise."

"I hate to repeat myself, but our deal was clear. I won't harm anyone."

"Oh come on! I'm just asking you to stop him from inventing! What's the worst thing he's gonna do?"

There was an uncomfortable silence as Isabella looked at her with those dead, wide-open hypnotized eyes.

"... You don't know that side of him very well, I suppose."

"What side of him?"

"It's okay. I only knew it for a year and a half now. It's not pleasant to think about, and even worse to talk about."

"…That bad?"

Isabella's stare only served to creep her out further.

"Oh, fine. Let's see, what else is new? Let me think…"

It took her a long 5 minutes of silent contemplation and staring at the bright pink walls of Isabella's room to think up of a while worthy plan.

"Hey... Wait a minute, wait a minute! That's it! Hahaha!"

Isabella's head leaned by its weight to the side again; this time, she didn't bother correcting it.

"It's a two-way street! It's two birds with one stone! I'll have my laughs, and you'll stop him from ruining the entire day! This is perfection!"

"If you don't mind me asking, what is your plan?"

"Well the plan is simple, my dear," she said, striding confidently to the front of the chair. "We are going to use the one force, the only one force that is _so powerful,_ it'll even distract him enough from inventing!"

Candace grabbed the semi-unconscious girl and shook her by her shoulders.

"I expect you already know your duty."

"That depends. Do you expect me to dine?"

"No, Ms. Garcia-Shapiro," she replied calmly. "I expect you to _confess._ "

* * *

"So why am I here again?"

"You are here to witness the largest and most important step we ever took on Project Goldlocker, my dear Stacy. After your whole shtick with the monsters, I'd prefer you to help me through this important stage, while also bearing witness to what could be my third greatest success in life."

"Uh-huh. And by that, of course you mean..."

"You gotta help me stick the camera into the window, Stace. I tried for like an hour, but I just can't understand one page of that manual."

"Thought so. Hold on..."

Stacy moved to the mess of wires below the window to try to install the camera. "So refresh my memory here. What's Project Goldlocker? If this is another one of your busting attempts, I told you in that bet—"

"No! Not at all. I've moved past busting those two for now. Now my concerns lie elsewhere..." She peered down the window, adding a dramatic pause for theatrics... "Like doing good to the universe."

"Alll right, what's with the dramatic pause? People only do that when they're planning stuff way bigger than they could handle."

"Heh. Please. I've planned a wedding. There's no plan on this universe that I can't handle."

"Sure, whatever you say. Planningyourbrothers'downfallseemstotakealongtime. What good to the universe? And I hate to be the two-bit nosey girl, but why do you really want to do this?"

"Those two questions will be answered the moment she gets up and do the deed. Which she can't until you got that camera covered. That ready yet?"

"Just a minute... There."

Stacy flicked a lever, and the display monitor on the table turned itself on, displaying the image of the backyard with Phineas and Ferb under the tree as usual.

"Alright then... Here is where boundaries end and brilliance begins!"

With that, Candace pushed a button with a wide grin. Isabella could be seen moving from the porch into the gate, with a relaxed stride and a rose behind her back.

But just as she stepped one foot through the gate however, she froze in place with eyes wide open, without even a blink to prove she was conscious.

"Hey there Isabella," Phineas greeted. "What are you doing out there standing on the gate? Come on over!"

With a very slight pause, she shook her head at a single fraction of a second, before returning the offer with a smile.

"Sure! Wonder what the heck I was doing there anyhow. So, what'cha doin'?"

As Phineas explained the day's invention, Stacy only looked at Candace with what could be described as half a smirk, half a frown.

"I'm waiting…"

"What? That's impossible! How could she resist?"

"Resist what? Really, I'd like to know. Even though I know it won't be good…"

After a long delay, Candace took a big sigh.

"Fine. Here goes. So, at the beginning…"

* * *

 _One short and long recap later…_

"… and that's how we ended up on this situation..."

There was silence as Candace looked up at the ceiling.

"… hey, did you just feel a scene wipe? Oh come on, that recap's only three minutes long!"

"Pfft. I've seen worse. But don't try to steer the conversation into a scene wipe, Candace – let's talk about this for a sec! You accidentally mind-controlled a girl, and rather than turn her to normal, you _purposely_ left her in that situation, to do what now?"

"Help her to confess her love to her crush so he'll be too busy pondering about it to invent anything that could ruin my day."

"Exactly! I mean, the ends are honorable, but the methods and the motives… Ugh! You know, I can't decide whether to give you a big hug or slap you in the face!"

"Believe me, I had that dilemma when I realized I hypnotized her by accident. It lasted about three seconds."

Stacy groaned again, walking around with a palm stuck on her forehead.

"… okay. _Assume_ that I'd like to see how this all will end, and _assume_ that I'll help you with your plan… If I were to ask you, how did you phrase your command to her, as in repeat it to me word-by-word, how would you answer?"

"Uh, let's see… I gave her a trigger. 'When you hear the words 'Break the Looking Glass', you will confess your crush on Phineas, regardless of your doubts, possible regrets and other hindering, unnecessary prudences.' "

"Okay let me… wait aminute… I think I got it!"

"You do?"

"You said 'regardless of prudences'. That's where you went wrong!"

"… explain, please."

"Okay, there was this accident that Ginger told me during her first Code 3-16 a few months back. Three years ago, Isabella had something like this happen to her when she was little…er than usual. To spare you the graphic details, let me ask you another hypothetical question; have you seen an innocent crush turned up to 500 percent?"

She took a gulp. "…no, but that sounds pretty horrible…"

"Exactly. As the story goes, this accident made her paranoid. Like, paranoid enough that she actually went to the higher ups in her Fireside Girls' section to give her a mental block so that she won't speak about love confessions under influences _ever again._

"Whoa. That sounds like…"

"The best creepy campfire story ever told, I know. But as the situation goes, it's anything but campy for her. Or the rest of her troop, apparently."

"So you mean to tell me I can't get her to confess? There goes my free day…"

"Hmm. Maybe not directly, no. Maybe you don't have to get her to confess _directly…_ but there are other ways to a heart than words, right?"

Candace let out a small sigh. "I suppose so…"

"Tell you what, you start rewiring the trigger for her, and I'll see if I can't get past that supposed mental block."

"Wait. How are you going to do that?"

"I'll call a few favors with _my_ little twerp. She started that accident with the black hole. I'd say she has a few debts to pay."

"Wait, are you actually helping me now? Despite all that you've said earlier about how this is all so morally wrong?"

"Oh, I'm not doing this for you, Candace. I'm doing this for love.

Candace only gave her an expectant look.

"What? What's with that loo… Alright, you got me!" She gave in, putting her hands in the air. "This story is just gold for the dramedy genre. I show it in my entry in the gossip posse, and I'll win that first spot! I'll be _the_ girl with the coolest story ever told!"

"That's your real reason. Alright then, you are excused."

As Stacy ran out of the door, Candace looked down the window again.

"And I have a test subject to recover…"

But when she looked down, she saw Phineas showcasing a small ball that had at least three dozen micro-screen projectors disguised as holes around its surface.

"But I have some brothers to bust first, apparently. This'll have to wait…"

* * *

While Doofenshmirtz dusted his Inator's remote, Perry's head fur silently pulled out a mirror out of his hat.

"Oh, and fun fact; did you know I had to fight an entire court of lawyers to get the naming rights?" Doofenshmirtz said, putting up a heart sticker on the remote. "Call me crazy, but apparently, the name 'Sunbeater' was already taken by a couple of kids for a 'plane' that 'supposedly' 'bounced' around 'the world'. Heh, yeah right. They're just still mad that I broke their nice ceiling. I mean, that's so outlandish it's just impossible, right?"

When he turned around, he only saw exactly one platypus running a speedy fist at his face.

"Ouch! …Well at least you let me finish my sentence this time around. That's an improvement."

But without delay, Doofenshmirtz reacted by pushing the remote's button, bringing the Inator to life.

"Now, Perry the Platypus, witness as Danville is slowly reduced to a sweaty fireball, a dystopia ruled by heat, before it is ruled by _me!"_

Both man and platypus looked up as the Inator climbed up to the sky, where it lighted up each of its panels into white…

And nothing else.

Perry licked one of his fingers and stuck it in the air; there's not even a minuscule change in the temperature, much less the destructive fireball of heat Doofenshmirtz was so noisy about.

Dissatisfied, Perry shot up a glare at Doofenshmirtz.

"What? I said slowly."

There was silence as the nemeses keep looking up, where the Inator continues to spin ever slowly in the sky, glowing a pretty shade of white but doing nothing else to the city.

"So… you wanna go get a snack while this thing finish heating itself up?"

Perry's response was a swift kick in the doctor's knee, followed by running to the self-destruct button at the base of the metal support.

"Yep, that's what I thought too. Come back here, Perry the Platypus!"

* * *

Phineas turned around for a moment, and saw the blank space where Isabella should be.

"Hey, where'd Isabella go?"

"Phineas and Ferb! You two are so busted!"

The brothers looked up to the second floor window, where Candace was busy yelling her lungs out at them.

"Good morning, Candace! Any chance you've seen Isabella inside the house?"

"Isabella? What the… oh, for crying out loud, she's disappeared. I'll get to that later. Back to you two: What the heck are you building?!"

"Oh, this is barely finished yet! But Irving asked us to build this one, so we—"

Phineas raised his head up in realization, then turned to Ferb.

"Say Ferb, where is Irving, anyway? He should've been here like an hour ago. And Buford and Baljeet are late too..."

Ferb only shrugged in response.

"Heh, looks like we've got this day all for ourselves, huh? Fitting."

"Hey, you'll get a full room for yourselves when mom sees what you're doing!" Candace interrupted. "I'm going to find mom and when I do, you're gonna be so busted!"

She ran out of her room, with footsteps echoing all the way outside.

"Hmm. So Ferb, is that teleporter device working? We wouldn't want any problems in case Irving really is unavailable."

* * *

"What the heck are we doing here, anyhow? We're supposed to be at Phineas and Ferb's like an hour ago!"

"Oh calm down, fanboy. We're all C-side characters in this story anyway. They don't need us."

Irving and Buford were at the center of Danville Park, standing on the grass and lying on a lounge chair respectively, where they watched Baljeet running laps in the meadow.

"And you dragged us all the way out here why?"

"Survival training! You wanted to be part of our group, then you gotta work for it. First we almost lost summer twice, then we fought a pharmacist zombie plague, and then I heard there was a world-ending monster that almost got loose by that Fireside Girl whats-her-name doing experiments on a gerbil! And it's not even the end of summer yet! We need to prepare, man. Haven't you noticed that we've been getting a lot of special circumstances in these last summers? We! Need! To! Prepare!"

"Alright, alright! But could you stop shaking me up like a ragdoll?"

Buford went completely still for a second, before removing his hands from Irving's shoulders.

"Oh, sorry. Got caught up in the moment."

Baljeet stopped in front of the two, gasping away for breath. That is, until he abruptly ceased all movement, and looked up in the sky with a curious look.

"Hey, does anyone feel that extra heat in the air?"

"Oh please. That's just the lack of air in your lungs and legs. You'lll get better."

"To you, of course that would be the explanation. But I have attuned my senses, and I can tell you that the temperature is increasing by 0.004 degrees Celcius every ten seconds! I need to get my tools! This could be my breakthrough in the Climate Acclimatization School…!"

Cheering, Baljeet stormed off into the wayside, leaving Irving and Buford by themselves.

"… Is he… always like that?"

"Some days are better than others. And don't try to change the subject. Drop and give me twenty."

* * *

Candace stormed out the door, but skidded to a halt when she heard someone exclaim her name.

"Candace! You still have a promise to keep!"

She turned around to see Isabella with a not-quite frown on her face.

"Oh, it's you. I thought you got cold feet. Look, I know—"

"It didn't work, Candace. I just remembered the mental block I installed three years ago. You gotta help me get past the thing!"

"Look, I'd love to, but this is a bit important. Can't it take a rain check, for, like, eleven minutes?"

"Candace! Look, I'd help you in exchange. Didn't we talk about how I can stall Phineas while you get your mom to see his invention?"

"Wait, you're actually thinking about helping me get your crush into trouble?"

"Oh, please. I know you wouldn't _really_ get him in trouble. You never will until we're all 30 years old anyway."

"What was that?"

"Nothing! I just want you to keep your promise."

"Ugh! Okay, okay, let me…" "Okay. First, how would you remove this mindblock?"

"You can't. That info's restricted to Fireside Girl Level 4 personnel only. I never got around to asking her how I would get rid of it… And don't even think about calling her, the Commandos' channel is always locked in a pile messages. I'll never reach her in time."

"Then how am I supposed to help you? I don't know the first thing about mindblocks!"

In five seconds, Isabella came with a telltale grin of a new idea.

"Maybe you don't need to _remove_ them…"

* * *

Doofenshmirtz barely ducked from the thrown chair, and retaliated with throwing a random half-bitten ham sandwich from the table.

Perry only looked halfheartedly as the squiqqly sandwich slid down the ground in pieces in front of him, then pointed the same look at Doofenshmitz.

"Oh man, I'm running out of ideas. Okay, that's it, Perry the Platypus! Time to reveal my ace in the hole! Just for this case, I've created an extra Inator to vanquish you!"

He pulled out a ray gun from his pocket and presented it to the secret agent. "Behold, the Mini-Vaporizer Inator! It vaporizes anything that it hits! Simple, right?"

Perry responded by throwing another piece of random furniture, which Doofenshmirtz readily vaporized.

"Now we begin round 2, Perry the Platypus! Have at you!"

The platypus rolled his eyes again; this'll take less than a minute.

With a sharp pose, Perry taunted Doofenshmirtz, wiggling his fingers at the Drusselsteinian man to get him to fire.

"Oohh, you're being cocky, are you now Perry the Platypus? You forget, I can vaporize you into a puff of smoke and little bits of fur!"

Doofenshmirtz blasted his ray gun at Perry, but the platypus pulled a fast roll to the side, dodging the laser beam easily; leaving it heading straight into the Sunbeater-Inator's metal support.

Doofenshmirtz's eyes nearly popped out of their sockets when he realized what he just did…

Except the laser beam reflected off the metal bar on contact, heading off into the blue horizon.

Perry barely held back a look of shock at the Inator's undamaged support; when he turned around, he saw that Doofenshmirtz had the exact same look as him.

"Huh. I… really did not see that coming. I guess that 400-dollar beige beatnik paint really did pay off."

Perry turned around again to the support, as if he didn't believe Doofenshmirtz had enough planning skills to anticipate that scenario; when he went back to Doofenshmirtz however, the doctor was a lot closer to the agent than he was before.

"Oh, Perry the Platypus…" He pointed the gun menacingly at the platypus. "Care to sit down?"

Perry steeled himself to fight again, putting up the best ready-to-fight pose he had.

"No really Perry the Platypus, take a seat!" He pointed the gun to a lounge table behind himself that wasn't there five seconds ago. "I just got this really nice flashback involving beatnik paint, way back in 1978. The Disco Age, to boot! And you know best that if I have a flashback in the middle of anything, I have to tell it at that exact moment, period. So, care to sit down, Perry the Platypus?"

Perry felt an eye twitch as Doofenshmirtz offered him a seat at a lounge table, complete with drinks and a plate full of chocolate cheese sandwiches.

"Come on, I know even you won't deny a guy a chance to tell a flashback, right? That's the essence of being a good guy!"

There was silence as Doofenshmirtz held the chair to the platypus with an offering smile.

Well, even the agent can't argue with an essence of being a good guy. Especially if it got him a decent meal.

* * *

"…Now I just gotta…"

Candace ran across the street for three seconds before she stopped herself stiff. After a little over six more seconds, she spun her heel in a complete 180.

"Oh, who am I kidding? This is just too big to miss. Especially if it gets me a decent proof! Of good and bad!"

She peered her cellphone camera's lens over the fence, giving her visual of the near-finished giant ball of troubleness the boys have built, and Isabella trying to get across the backyard.

Phineas looked up from the clipboard to see Isabella walking up to him with a smile.

"Oh, hey Isabella. Thought you'd be taking off for the day. Is everything alright?"

"Yeah! Everything's a-rosie. In fact, Phineas, I actually kinda need your help need something…"

"Help? Sure!" he said, dropping down the ladder. "What do you need?"

"A bit of a miss, Phineas. The question is, what do _we_ need? Don't you think we're still lacking… a little _something?_ "

She rested her hands behind her back and tilted herself 45 degrees forward for extra points. It didn't exactly take him long to realize it.

"Oh shoot!" He smacked a palm on his forehead. "Of course! The musical number! How could I forget? I thought the guys at C-Story took care of that!"

"Well," she said coyly, extending a hand. "Shall we?"

"Heh heh. Alright then… Lead away, madam."

Knowing what was about to happen, Ferb – still strapped to a tether in the air – pulled out a harmonica and played a single sustained note for five seconds…

Before throwing the thing away and switching it with a full-sized flute, which he used to play a background music to Isabella's own serenade.

 _Now I know what you're thinking:  
You wondered why I took you  
out of all the boys in the world.  
Now that's just a first impression!  
What good's a first impression?  
If you knew you like I do,  
it will change your point of view…_

 _If you could see you through my eyes,  
you wouldn't wonder at all.  
If you could see you through my eyes,  
I guarantee you would fall (like I did!)  
When we're in public together,  
I'd see you clueless and dull.  
But if you could see you through my eyes…  
Maybe you'll see and be appalled!_

 _How can I speak of your virtues,  
I don't know where to begin!  
You're clever, you're smart, you read music,  
you don't leave off the 'm' in 'time' (not anymore, at least!)  
Yet when we're walking together,  
You joke as if I don't mean it.  
But when you see you through my eyes…  
Maybe you'll finally feel me in here!_

As the music slowly faded out, Isabella finally decided it's time.

"Phineas, is it okay if I ask you a question?"

"Sure. go ahead."

"Simple question, really: do you trust me? As in, anything I do, you'll trust me that it will _not_ break your mind?"

"You? Of course you won't, you're my friend."

"Good enough."

With that, she leaned in closer and closer...

But before she could do that, she was knocked back by an invisible field, felling her to the ground.

"Isabella! You okay?"

She groaned as she stood back up, feeling up the side of her head.

"Ouch! So apparently on the cheek's past that line too… Darn it."

"What line?"

She only responded with a large sigh.

"Nothing, Phineas. Nothing at all."

She raised an eyebrow; behind that smile, she was sure she heard a chuckle coming out of him.

"What is it, Phineas?"

"You know what's funny? The invention that replays clips of past inventions is sitting unfinished back there, and here you are, getting all weird like you did in that space station 3 years ago. Are you sure you're okay?"

"Relax, I'll shrug it off. I always do."

* * *

"Well now, isn't that sweet! Hey people, take a look at this!"

"Mom! You're missing the point!" Candace exclaimed, zooming the video again. "…Okay, I admit, it is kinda cute, but that's not the point! Look at Ferb in the background!"

"Ferb in the background? Honey, I don't see anything here. I think the sun's in the way."

"The sun's in the…"

Candace looked again, and saw it; a giant white light where Ferb and the invention were supposed to be.

"What—but how!? It's 12 o'clock! The sun can't twinkle in on my camera if it's on top of the camera! It can only do that if it's behind it!"

"Hmm. So do you suggest there's a second sun orbiting Danville right now that's ruining your shot, dear?"

"Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if that happens."

* * *

"And that, Perry the Platypus, is how I set fire to Major Monogram's perm-wearing streak. I guess he never did find out… Say, do you get those little stomach tickles when you finish one of these chocolate-cheese sandwiches? Because I do. I don't know if that's just me being full or it's the cheese being weird, but still…"

Perry took the last bite out of his sandwich, and looked up:

His full stomach barely had time to react when he heard the doctor say "Andnow,whileyouareunprepared,heregoesmyplanB, !"…

And with an Inator's red flash and a very wide pair of eyes, all that remained of him was smoke floating away from the chair.

"Whoa… I… I… I did it!" The doctor cheered like a toddler finding candy, spinning from one end of the lab to the other. "Perry the Platypus fell for the Plan B! Perry the Platypus IS GOOONNEEE!"

But he heard his own mind crash like breaking glass when he heard his last statement.

"Perry the Platypus is… _gone?"_

He rushed to the chair again, this time out of worry; what he found is exactly as he described just half an hour ago.

Smoke and bits of blue fur.

"Perry the Platypus is… _gone!"_

Doofenshmirtz fell to his knees, pointed both fists to the sky, and screamed the largest 'NOOOOO!' he ever had in his life. Considering his life's circumstances, that yell can be heard from all the way outside...

When he finally ran out of breath, he let himself fall into all fours at the floor; but that made him realize one false detail in the mistake.

"What the heck…"

When he took a closer look at the chair, there were slight remains of Perry's fur. Except he finally saw, there was never any fur there; just pieces of blue wood.

"Wood?"

He gasped out loud and looked to the balcony. "This means—"

And sure enough, there was Perry the Platypus, alive and not burned at all, seemingly waiting for Doofenshmirtz to catch him by the balcony.

"A decoy? Ingenious, Perry the Platypus! Too ingenious! But you're not getting off that easy!"

But the platypus did not bother to wait for the doctor to arrive at the balcony; with a bored face, he pushed the self-destruct button on the Inator's metal support. And with a large boom, the Sunbeater-Inator exploded out of the sky, leaving no trace of its previous existence.

When Doofenshmirtz finally arrived there, gasping and huffing for breath, Perry was already off with his glider.

"Hey! Come back here! You didn't even apologize for letting me believe you were dead! Curse you, Perry the Platypus!"

Meanwhile, up in the sky, the (admittedly little) extra heat emitted by the Sunbeater-Inator already accelerated the water evaporation-precipitation cycle on the clouds, immediately causing rain to fall on the annoyed Doofenshmirtz.

"And I get a late rain and thunder for my efforts. Gee, where does the dramatic weather go when you need it!?"

A thunder crackled above him, and Doofenshmirtz opened his eyes wide in realization.

"Ooh... OHH!"

He slapped a hand to his temple. "Now I remember! Gotta get gone, gotta get gone..."

Cackling evilly all the while, Doofenshmirtz ran back into the lab.

"Of course! I know what I'm going to do tomorrow!"

* * *

"Well at least it was raining before it was my turn to get shredded by the Mud Jobs Guys," Irving said, leaning back at the bench under the Random Store awning. "I'll count that as a victory."

"Don't count yourself out yet," Buford interjected. "If I know the plotting insignutia, there'll be an umbrella just waiting to float by us."

"What's an insignutia?"

"Oh, that's a fun field to get to. I'll get to it just as soon as we get that umbrella—"

Buford was stopped by a flash of red hitting the corner of his eye; that light, of course, was the Mini-Vaporizer Inator's long reflected beam, still buzzing around town like a hungry hound.

And it found its target through a very serendipitous set of mirrors, and three extremely unremarkable kids.

And of course, the beam struck where it would hurt the most; the clothes.

"… And instead of an umbrella, we get caught in the obligatory first reflected beams from the sky instead," Baljeet remarked, letting his head fall into his arms. "Man, do I hate the flip side of plotting insignutia."

Irving felt a beep and stretched his hand; out of the air, teleported a very miniaturized form of the ball that Phineas and Ferb was building earlier in the day.

"Oh look, here's the EDI I asked Phineas and Ferb to build. Timely."

"Well, what does it do?"

"Nothing that'll help us here. The Everyday Display Invention just records every anomalous event around me, 24/7, for a persistent colleague. He wants proof that our city is just as weird as his is."

There was silence; the two kids blinked twice, and turned to him with horrified faces.

"Dude. In case you didn't notice, how did we get into sitting in our underwear in the middle of the rain?"

"Is this a set-up for a joke? Oh, I love jokes! Well, we got into that because our clothes were evaporated by a random beam from the sky-y-y-y…."

Amplifying Irving's realization was the fact that he was just noticing the blinking red lights beside every single eye on that ball.

"…Oohh… Don't give me that look you two, you are not touching this thing!"

* * *

"So… rain. Well, mom said she's not coming out until 2, so what do I have to lose."

Candace closed the door and died herself off, before seeing three kids welding stuff inside the living room.

"Hey Candace! "Phineas greeted again. "We've just finished the EDI!"

"The EDI?"

He showed her a very minitiaurized form of the massive ball on the backyard. "The Everyday Display Invention. This little ball can record seven zettabytes of video clips; enough to sustain for a lifetime! The large one that you can ride in was vaporized though, so we only had time to build this little replica instead. I think we'll keep it. Care to watch a few with us, Candace?"

"Watching a lifetime's worth of you people building stuff? I'll pass, thanks."

With that, she climbed up the stairs up to her room. "Oh, mom says hi. She's gonna be back at two o'clock, and off-limits until then."

She stopped herself at the middle of the stairs. "One last thing…" she turned to the only girl beside her in the room. "Isabella, did it work?"

"No," she answered with a fake smile. "it didn't."

"Darn. And I was looking forward to that at least…"

She felt her phone vibrate in her pocket; when she saw the message, she felt a smile crawling up.

"But, it looks like I get a win for niceness after all. Isabella? Come up here. We'll talk."

* * *

"Okay, but in any case, _don't_ ask me what I had to do to get this. Okay?"

Both Candace and Isabella was visibly weirded out by the Asian girl; she was panting heavily, had black makeup on her cheeks, and was wearing a horribly mismatched clown suit and black tight pants.

"Uh…"

"I SAID DON'T ASK ME!"

"We didn't! And we won't! We won't ask you how you got that. Just tell us how."

"Phew. Okay, thanks."

"Okay, see, it's actually pretty simple. The recipient of the block has to receive the command with a language that she doesn't know, but thesecond most important person on that block must know that language. You catching me?"

Isabella and Candace looked at each other, then looked back at Stacy.

"Uh… no."

"It's… actually kinda hard to take you seriously while you're looking like that."

She sighed. "Alright, I'll make this simple. Isabella, do you know Latin?"

"Latin? Well, not much. I mean, me and my troop are going to get a Latin Speaker Patch later this summer…"

"Good enough. And Candace, does Phineas know Latin?"

"Pfft. 'Does Phineas know Latin'… That boy can crack a Roman cipher in 70 BC and I think he built a time machine and almost talked with Caesar himself way back when. Yeah, you can count him as 'knowing'."

"Good enough." " Now, Candace, read this out loud…"

Stacy gave her a piece of paper, which she proceeded to read:

"Okay. Dear recipient name here, this will be the first and last command you'll hear that bypasses your mental block. Any other reaches must be consulted with Level 4 Personnel for authorization. When I snap my fingers, you'll execute one last command before you wake up with no recollection of your execution of said command… What's this, I can't even pronounce… quasi osculans eum?"

"Perfect! And in three, two, one…"

Isabella blinked twice, and with a smile, proceeded down the stairs.

"I don't get it," Candace said to Stacy, still looking at the command paper. "What exactly did I do?"

"Relax, you'll see it in five seconds," Stacy answered calmly. "Why don't we go down and take a look?"

They went down and settled on the middle of the stairs. "Mind you, this is all still experimental. I can't even guarantee success until…"

It didn't take five seconds for the girls to let their mouths fall agape at the sight in front of them.

"...Yeah, nevermind. It succeeded, alright."

"Oh, you sly silly girl, Stacy!" "You are a genius!"

"Don't credit me. I simply did it for my soon-to-be elevated position. Heh, position…"

Candace grinned for the next four minutes; however, an audible sound of glass shattering could be heard insde her head as she remembered a small fact.

She only gave a dismayed sigh in response.

"What is it, Candace?"

"It's... It's... it's nothing... Well, it won't be, in a couple of minutes."

"A couple of minutes? What are you talking about?"

"Take pictures while you can. No, really. We won't remember any of this in a couple of minutes."

"Come on, Candace, don't get weird on me. What's going to happen?"

"You'll see. Even I just remembered. This is _way_ too much an offensive to the status quo... "

"And it won't be kind when it erases all this from existence," she finished in the same shocked tone. "Hoo boy."

* * *

In the credits...

"What? You're saying I need to wait 50.000 years until they arrive here?"

" _^#! &^ !()!Y$! ))! #+=-"_

"Hey, don't tell me about slow FTL travel, buddy. I went through space too many times to count to be having a conversation with crazy aliens who have slow faster-than-light travel! I mean it's literally named faster-than-light travel! How could you not-"

" _? !)$* &%!_^)!_"_

"What? What does the Pyramids of Egypt has to do with-"

" _#%)*Q !*+?"_

"Oohh... Yeah, I always wondered how they were able to get that much stone in the middle of the desert. So you're saying that I need to get to the Pyramids of Egypt to..."

" _!(*$ ?_! )# :!"_

"Huh. Alright then, sounds simple enough. See you in two weeks."

Doofenshmirtz hung up the phone, and huffed as he made his way to his room.

"Well that's just great. Now I have to write a letter of absence to OWCA, pack my bags with clothes that'll probably get lost on the plane, buy a ticket, which means I'll have to wait in line, wait for the insanely long demands of the cashier, drive back home and start packing my evil plans, buy a whole set of Camera-Inators to watch over Vanessa, get a couple of extra vomiting bags for air sickness..."

While he was walking however, he tripped over an untied shoelace, and accidentally hit the fire button on a nearby cached Inator.

"Oh man!" He rubbed the new bump on his head. "I tripped over my shoelace and activated the Proto-Mind-o-Break Inator! Again?"

As if reprimanding himself, he got up and rolled his eyes back, slapping a palm into his head to boot.

"Falling over and hitting an Inator so it can fire off and clean up some mess someplace... Ugh, that is so cliche."

* * *

 ** _Hello again._**

 ** _Due to several very pressing concerns (not to mention the end of summer vacation way back when), I'm afraid to tell you that I can only update once a month now. Not that I was famous for following up on time limits anyhow..._**

 ** _Secondly, I want to say that, yes, you can in fact, submit your own little ideas and request for new chapters. I actually like that; saves me from thinking up new stories myself. I mean... it's nice to see viewer input. Whichever one works for you._**

 ** _And lastly, do leave a review to tell me what you think of it. Believe me, with everything, every ltitle bit helps me get to the next chapter._**

 ** _Salute from me to you._**

 ** _-ay2001  
_**


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